Sidewalk Snow Clearing Trial

Note: this is copied from the City of Toronto Knowledge Base

The City will begin the Sidewalk Snow Clearing Trial on the first snowfall following January 27th, 2020.

For the trial, the City purchased eight smaller sidewalk plows which will plow approximately 200 km of sidewalks in total. Each of these plows will be assigned two routes ranging from 9-15 km of sidewalk. These plows will be deployed whenever 2 cm of snow accumulates, which is the same threshold to activate our sidewalk plows on the existing routes. When deployed, each plow will complete one route per day, which means that in response to a winter event it will take two days to complete one full round of snow clearing on the trial sidewalks.

    Route 1 PDF: St. Clair, Rogers, Dufferin, Keele
    Route 2 PDF: Bloor, Jane, Runnymeade, Annette, Dundas
    Route 3 PDF: Yonge, Avenue, Lawrence, Eglinton
    Route 4 PDF: Bloor, Roncesvalles, Parkside, Queensway
    Route 5 PDF: Bloor, Landsdowne, Ossington, Dufferin, Queen
    Route 6 PDF: Bloor, Dupont, Ossington, Christie, Bathurst
    Route 7 PDF: Danforth, Gerrard, Broadview, Carlaw, Greenwood
    Route 8 PDF: Gerrard, Kingston, Woodbine, Main, Victoria Park

Sidewalk Selection

Currently, seniors or persons with disabilities who live in a part of the city without mechanical sidewalk clearing can apply for inclusion in a program that brings City workers to clear their sidewalks manually. This trial will bring mechanical clearing to 1,443 houses enrolled in that program, making the program more efficient while also providing a large enough area to effectively evaluate the equipment. Transportation Services will continue manually clearing sidewalks for seniors or persons with disabilities whose households were not included in this trial.

The routes have been designed to capture the most houses possible enrolled in the seniors or people with disabilities snow clearing program. Although the trial is focused on clearing houses enrolled in that program, operators will clear the entire length of sidewalk on that block, where possible. This means a greater length of sidewalk will be cleared, and snow clearing will be continuous on each block. This will allow a better evaluation of the effectiveness of the new plows.

Next Steps

In addition to evaluating new equipment, staff are also working to complete a full inventory of sidewalk widths, obstructions and other obstacles, such as utility poles, planters, retaining walls and on-street parking adjacent to the sidewalk. Staff will use this inventory, the results of the sidewalk snow clearing trial, and other analysis to determine whether it is possible to bring mechanical sidewalk clearing to parts of the city that do not currently receive it, and if possible, what resources would be required.

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