City holds off review of winter bus stop maintenance
City commuters may be forced to scale large snowdrifts at bus stops again this winter, after the city decided yesterday to buy more plows but delay a review of transit stop snow clearing.
Council yesterday voted to buy five plows for $1.37 million, plus $640,000 a year to operate them, for use in areas that a review found were underserved during last season’s frequent snowstorms. But an assessment of winter bus stop maintenance will wait another year.
The decision didn’t sit well with some councillors, who were inundated with complaints last winter after large snowdrifts made certain transit stops nearly inaccessible, especially to disabled riders.
“You’re still going to get those great big windrows every time you get a storm. What you need are the special machines (that) are going to ... deal directly with the bus stops and that’s not going to happen,” said Capital ward Coun. Clive Doucet.
Catherine Gardner, a community advocate for riders with disabilities, said the city had made some improvements, but much less than needed.
“For the 2008 winter it means we’re going to have the same problem as last year,” she said.
“There is one recommendation to clear sidewalks in front of seniors’ and nursing homes, but a lot of people in wheelchairs live in the community. They still have to get around in the winter.”
But the problem with sharply improving bus stop snow clearing, said surface operations director John Manconi, is that it comes with a price tag of between $4.1 million and $8.2 million annually, depending on whether service is every 12 or six hours. The city currently clears stops on a 24-hour cycle.
Clearing bus stops every six hours would require an extra 104 pieces of equipment.
“They are very large expenditures,” Manconi said.
