Reprint: Planning for complete places means planning for people, not just cars (from 1/31/2009)

Yajaira Rivera is forced by snow to walk her baby in the street in Lawrence. Joanne Rathe, Boston Globe.

The Boston Globe ran this article, "Uncleared sidewalks imperil pedestrians," which discusses the death of pedestrians forced to walk on the street, because of snowy, icy sidewalks. From the article:

From the way sidewalks are plowed, it may seem that local governments assume the only people who walk outdoors in the winter are children on their way to school. But Oleg Kotlyarevskiy, 47, wasn't going to school on Dec. 23. It was 6:39 a.m., just starting to get light, when he was hit by a Volkswagen traveling north on Main Street in Acton. He got off the commuter rail train 14 minutes earlier and was probably walking in the road because, as police Lieutenant Robert Parisi said, the sidewalk was on the other side of the street behind a large snowbank. He was on his way to work, but he never got there. He was pronounced dead at the hospital that morning.

Bruce Stamski, director of public works in Acton, would not say whether the sidewalk on Main Street had been plowed. He said the town's first priority as far as snow on sidewalks is concerned has to do with schools - not commuter rail stations. ...

In Tewksbury, the superintendent of public works, Brian Gilbert, said the town plows less than half of sidewalks, focusing on those around schools. The town does not put sand or salt on sidewalks. DPW employees are not allowed to work overtime to plow pedestrian ways nor do they even begin sidewalk operations until after all the roads and parking lots have been dealt with, he said. ...

In Plymouth, where an 80-year-old woman who was taking her morning walk lost her life in January of 2000, her neighbor Alan Rogers, said the impassible sidewalk was to blame. The town began plowing the sidewalk for a couple of years after Iria Albertini was killed, but no longer does so, Rogers said. This winter, people are once again walking in the road, and it's another accident waiting to happen, he said. "We have housing for the elderly on the street and they often don't own cars and they often have to walk to 7-11," he said. "Even today, the same place where she was killed people still don't clean sidewalks."

It's fair to say that in most cities, snow removal on sidewalks is an afterthought. Most have laws requiring homeowners and businesses to shovel snow within 24 hours. But it's clear that routes to transit, areas around public facilities such as schools, recreation centers, and libraries don't get cleared immediately. And commercial districts without business improvement districts show inconsistent clearing as well.

The MinnPost ran a piece on how Minneapolis is considering the creation of a business improvement district, in part to handle snow removal from the sidewalks of the commercial district. According to "Improvement district would target downtown's snowbank menace" a three foot iced snowbank typically forms at the end of the sidewalk abutting the curb, over the course of winter.

MinnPost photo by Steve Berg. A driver trying to feed a parking meter on First Avenue last winter.

Washcycle also writes about the need for clearing snow from bicycle lanes. See "TheWashCycle: Winter plowing of Bike lanes." And the Minuteman Trail in the Boston region is now regularly cleared when it snows. See "Snow plowing planned for popular Minuteman Bikeway " from the Boston Globe. (Of course, it took the threat of a lawsuit on ADA grounds to do so. See the letter to the editor from the Globe, "Working together to improve Arlington trail.")

According to Lexington Selectman Hank Manz:

the bikeway has outgrown its description as a recreational path and has really become "an integral part of the way people get from place to place" ...

And the stupendous Bus Chick, Transit Authority blog in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer brings up icy sidewalks at bus stops in "No, no, no" and "Slippery sidewalks."

Westbound 14 stop at 23rd & Jackson, 11 AM, Seattle, December 20th, 2008.

Transportation planning around mobility rather than automobility means that snow removal planning needs to be more expansive than is typical.

The funny thing is as a child, for a time I lived in the nice Detroit neighborhood of Rosedale Park. Maybe it was because our Congresswoman lived two blocks down, but a snowplow unit with a twirling brush to remove snow from sidewalks used to run through the neighborhood sidewalks after snowfalls. How hard would it be to do that today, especially on routes to transit stations?

According to this press release, "Photo essay: Snow Day," from The University of Wisconsin, their snow removal plans include a program for clearing the many sidewalks crossing the campus. Makes sense, because students, faculty, and staff mostly get around the campus on foot.

Among the first pieces of equipment to hit the streets after a snowfall are the five broom tractors that brush off the miles of campus sidewalks. Image: Jeff Miller, University of Wisconsin.