What does Mississauga have that we don’t have? A city service that clears driveways after the plow has come by.
I was the recipient of an unnecessary but welcome wellness check during Ottawa’s huge snow-where-to-put-it-all fest last week, as a neighbour who hadn’t seen me outside since I’d shovelled the day before also noticed that my car hadn’t been moved. She sent me a text to see if I was OK.
I was fine but also appreciated the concern. Marc-Antoine Deschamps of the Ottawa Paramedic Service couldn’t say how many shovellers tackling that 70-cm snow dump were attended to by paramedics in the last week, except that the figure was, thankfully, fairly low. “We have witnessed a lot of collaboration within communities where neighbours assisted each other in clearing the snow and supporting the response of our paramedics,” he said in an email.
That’s great but there is a subset of shovellers whom I fear might not be included in whatever snow-related chest-pain statistics paramedics compile. I’m thinking of those who successfully finish shovelling their driveway, tiredly retreat inside, doff their coat, hat, boots and mitts, put on the kettle — then keel over when they see a passing street plow leave a Himalayan-style mountain range at the end of their driveway. Is winter-adjacent apoplexy an official cause of death in Canada? It should be.
You know all about these dense and almost immoveable structures dumped at the end of driveways. They’re called “windrows” and, according to the city, removing them is the homeowner’s responsibility. They’re so loathed that two winters ago in Mississauga, a number of snowplow operators quit after angry residents started attacking and damaging their plows because they inevitably created windrows.
And before you get all smug about Ottawans versus Mississaugans, Beacon Hill-Cyrville Coun. Tim Tierney, who chairs the city committee that is responsible for snow removal, says things aren’t much more civil here in SNO-Town, with numerous reports of Ottawa residents tossing shovels at plows in an effort to discourage them from leaving windrows on their driveways.
Evening Update
Are we not better than that?
There is a solution, one that will soon be adopted in Mississauga. Next winter, it will join the ranks of cities employing specialized windrow plows to clear the ends of driveways. It considered the option in 2023, but balked at the $11.6-million price tag. Last fall, however, a roughly $21-per-household charge was included in the city’s 3.3-per-cent property tax increase, allowing a city-wide windrow removal program starting next winter.
When I saw a video of a windrow plow in action this week, my heart leapt (in a good way). When can we get ours?
Not anytime soon, it turns out.
The idea of a city clearing windrows is hardly new. North York doubled the size of its grader fleet in 1985 and attached to the underbodies of half of them a scraper, or “snow gate,” that could be lowered and raised at driveway entrances. Those graders simply followed the street plows, approximately an hour later, pushing snow from driveways and leaving it at the side of each.
Scarborough followed suit two years later. Without extra available graders, it instead used small tractors and front-end loaders to push the snow to the sides of driveways.
Ottawa, meanwhile, studied the idea in 2003, but concluded it was too costly, with an estimated annual price tag, assuming it used part-time staff and leased front-loaders (800 loaders would be needed, apparently), of just over $21 million, the equivalent today of about $33 million.
I don’t know how many driveway heart attacks it would take before taxpayers would willingly swallow a $33-million+ increase to the current $92-million snow removal budget.
Other factors entered into the decision not to add windrow-clearing to Ottawa’s plate, including the vast physical size of the city, and the greater frequency, amount and density of snow we get compared to the GTA. The pre-amalgamation City of Ottawa tried a pilot project 35 years ago, using a snow gate plow on one plow route for a full season, but it was deemed a failure. Five years later, the city considered adopting a user-pay system, but opted not to run a trial when it determined the cost would be $115 per driveway, the equivalent today of $215.
According to Tierney, the economics and logistics of employing them haven’t improved since the 2003 study. “It’s ridiculously expensive,” he said.
Quentin Levesque, the city’s director of Roads and Parking Services, added in an email that using plows with snow gates wasn’t a viable option here “due to the high density of driveways, equipment costs, and the additional resources required to meet Council-approved Winter Maintenance Quality Standards.
“Implementing snow gates would result in considerable costs, operational challenges, and significantly slower snow-clearing operations.”
Tierney, meanwhile, who is also first vice-president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, says he’s looked at cities across Canada, and none has satisfactorily solved the issue in a way that could translate to Ottawa’s climate and geography. And there aren’t any technological advancements on the horizon that might soon ease the strain on Ottawans’ hearts and backs.
One can hire private companies, of course, and many Ottawans do, often at higher rates. They may not always get to your windrow when you need to get out.
There’s a part of me that wants to say the city should rescue us from our windrows, but given the current challenges and expense, that cavalry is a long way away. Perhaps necessity, ingenuity and fiscal incentive will be the mothers of invention, with some clever Ottawan devising a practical and effective solution.
It wouldn’t be the first time, after all: It was Ottawa businessman and entrepreneur Thomas Ahearn who invented an electric rotating brush to clear streetcar tracks of snow, thus allowing year-round use of that particular mode of public transit. (He also invented the electric oven; you’re welcome, Mississauga.)
In the meantime, be kind to your neighbours and check in on them now and then. And that includes our street plow operators.
