The drop in temperature contributes to mobility problems in Toronto’s snow-capped streets

With Toronto still digging out of Monday’s massive winter storm, a new threat emerged Wednesday: falling temperatures after a brief thaw that quickly turned snow into ice.

“We are making very good progress,” Mayor John Tory said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon about efforts to clear Monday’s avalanche.

He said there were about 600 road plows, 200 salt trucks and 360 sidewalk plows that “went on incessantly” as teams worked 24 hours.

With the prediction that icy temperatures should return, snow should be removed, he said, while the city would rely on thawing in the past.

Monday’s storm was the heaviest snowstorm Toronto has experienced in some time. By Wednesday morning, Environment Canada had issued a warning about temperatures falling from a day high above freezing, threatening to turn snowdrifts into solid pieces and cover sidewalks with runoff in pure ice.

Thursday’s day high was forecast to be -10 C, according to Environment Canada.

The salting of major roads and sidewalks by city staff continued until Wednesday night.

The icy conditions create another nightmare for those commuters, transit operators and especially those with mobility concerns, who have already had to contend with piles of fresh snow.

This is a potential danger that Patricia Pyrka, a Toronto resident, and her teenage son Finnan, who is cerebral palsied and uses a wheelchair, are well aware of.

“At one stage the roads were cleared and the snow was pushed on the pavement. “Some people made the effort to clear the sidewalks, (but) the snow pushed back,” she said. “It has become too narrow for a wheelchair.”

Finnan’s school temporarily provided him with taxi licenses so he could return to class. But with temperatures dropping and snow becoming hard and icy, it can take even longer to clear, Pyrka said.

“I can not afford to pay for taxis or Ubers to get anywhere, and I do not have a car,” she said. “It makes me nervous to think about next week,”

Toronto spends about $ 90 million on winter activities each year and it takes an average of about 14 to 16 hours for the city to clear neighborhood roads after the snow has stopped falling. For major roads, tram routes, streets with hills and bike paths it takes about six to eight hours.

Homeowners and business owners are expected to clear ice and snow from sidewalks in front of or next to their property within 12 hours of a snowfall. Seniors or those with disabilities can apply at a city ​​program for snow removal.

With her service dog through downtown Toronto, Kat Berg experienced firsthand how winter storms can have the greatest impact on people with disabilities.

And the number of sidewalks Berg saw that still needed to be completely cleaned made her commute to work difficult. Berg, a third-year student at Ryerson University, has a service dog for medical alert purposes.

“I tried not to leave my apartment as much as possible simply because my street is extremely inaccessible,” she said.

“It leaves a lot of people, including myself, in a very complex situation, and having limited options in general for people with disabilities when it comes to commuting – it’s already difficult,” she said. “And those options are completely gone when the snow is here.”

In a 2014 winter maintenance report, the city said it is in line with the Accessibility Act for Ontarians with Disabilities (AODA) as it applies to the clearing of the winter sidewalk. The law requires municipalities to have a plan on how to maintain infrastructure such as sidewalks and to clear snow on accessible routes “soon”.

But the AODA does not require all sidewalks to be cleaned or the minimum width for how much cleaning to be done.

The city of Toronto did not respond by deadline to further questions about snow removal and mobility concerns.

The rock-hard ice will be a challenge to remove and an excessive reliance on salt could also hurt the environment, said Claire Oswald, an associate professor at Ryerson University who specializes in hydrology and urban water.

“We overuse salt in some areas and often it is private properties where there is an oversupply of road salt,” she said. “It gives way to streams and bodies of water and has a negative impact on the ecosystem.”

Kicking first is a better option and that includes helping others who need help, she said. A teaspoon to a tablespoon of dry rock salt is enough for a typical sidewalk.

“Be mindful of how much you put off … you want to see pretty big spaces between the grains of salt,” she said.

“You really want to take the extra time and distribute it evenly … that’s one of the most important things that can be done,” she said.