After two freezing storms in less than 10 days, Quebec’s sidewalks are stunning – literally. The citizens of the City, worried about toppling at the slightest sudden movement, stroll slowly in several sectors still covered with ice. The administration admits failures and promises improvements but some doubt that perfect snow removal is possible in the capital.
The steep streets of Saint-Jean-Baptiste and the posts emerging from the sidewalks in Saint-Sauveur, René Morency knows them by heart.
The 60-year-old spent 37 years behind the wheel of a snow plow clearing the streets of the capital. In his opinion, there is nothing to be done in front of the “weather bombs” that Mother Nature dropped on Quebec, to use the expression of the mayor, Bruno Marchand.
“It’s dramatic, what fell on us”, underlines the veteran snow plow. “In cases like that, it’s quite difficult to be perfect because everything is overused: the staff, the equipment, everything. “
A first storm on the 6th, followed by a second on the 12th, left a thick layer of ice in several residential streets in Quebec. Nature has rarely made such great whims in such a short time, observes René Morency, who notes that the spreading bill promises to be steep this year.
“In a normal winter, my business spends an average of $ 100,000 on abrasives,” says Morency. He estimates at $ 75,000 the sums spent since the first snowflakes.
The first challenge of the new administration
Snow and ice removal constitute, in Quebec, an issue on which an administration can break its teeth.
The town hall took the big steps, last weekend, by banning parking and deploying all its staff overnight from Saturday to Sunday, spending $ 35,000 in overtime to try to speed up the latest storm. The administration draws up an “overall positive” assessment of the “experience”.
“The idea was not to carry out a perfect activity,” recalls Pierre-Luc Lachance, vice-president of the executive committee and responsible for snow removal in the City. “We are aware that there were certain pitfalls: we welcome them. “
The opposition denounces a public relations operation more than snow removal. “There are places where one has the impression that the job was not made, ”declared Tuesday Claude Villeneuve, leader of the first opposition to the town hall.
Sunday and Monday, the 311 line dedicated to municipal services received approximately 900 calls related to snow removal. Most of them concerned the ice still present in several sectors, specifies Martin Forgues, director of maintenance of public roads in Quebec. Some reports also came from citizens looking for one of the 300 vehicles towed during the operation.
New team, new methods
Former mayor of Sillery and former municipal councilor in Quebec, Paul Shoiry admits to having “a hard time understanding the woes of municipal services this year”.
“It’s not rocket science,” he said. However, he notes “like everyone”, for two weeks, “that the city escapes him. “
Today far from the municipal apparatus, the former elected believes that the lack of experience of the new administration can partly explain the mixed results of snow removal.
Pierre-Luc Lachance, reappointed for a second term at town hall in November, defends himself. According to him, the young administration is shaking up the old ways of doing snow removal. The results will come as the new methods are refined.
For the moment, the master plan seems to involve citizens more by inviting them to point out the shortcomings of snow removal. Badly de-iced sidewalks, congested streets and clogged sumps must be the subject of a call to 311 for the city to intervene, he recalls.
The idea of appealing to the civic sense of the population and including it in the municipal snow-clearing effort, as is customary in other cities, is also of interest to the new administration.
A public road to rethink
Others invite the City to rethink the design of its public roads, largely focused on the automobile for a century.
The replacement of wooden sidewalks in favor of more durable concrete ones coincided with the advent of the automobile and the paving of the streets of Quebec. Historian Réjean Lemoine believes that sidewalks have been designed since the 1920s for cars.
“They are leaning, there are differences in level for each entry of cars, they are a roller coaster. It is the car that still takes up all the space in the public highway, ”he emphasizes.
A reality that is reflected in the priorities for snow removal, adds Marie-Hélène Vandersmissen, specialist in the geography of transport at Laval University.
“The main roads are always passable quickly. On the other hand, the sidewalks are always much longer, ”she laments. In his opinion, cities will have to quickly review the primacy given to the automobile in its snow removal efforts, as climate change and an aging population disrupt the weather and transportation habits.