Snowmageddon Vancouver: All The News Fit To Print

Chaos on Oak Street in Vancouver, photo © by Erich J. Harvey

I received an email from city Councillor Raymond Louie today in response to my earlier email I sent on Saturday, which when I think about it is a pretty timely response from a person who works for a government. His response:

Dear Mr Alexander

Thank you for your email as it helps to highlight and support the review that both Mayor Robertson and I have asked for of the pre-existing city policy on snow clearance. Both the Mayor’s office and I have been in regular contact with the city engineering department and asked that the review be expedited and any adjustments that can be made early be done.

In addition to major streets, city crews have been clearing areas around bus stops, streets around our emergency services, including our hospitals, ECOM, Vancouver Police and RCMP. As part of the review we will be asking that the Board of Parks and Recreation and School Board be included to better coordinate services. Side street clearance will be reviewed as well and perhaps implemented within functional capacity.

The city is currently using 20 dump trucks to remove accumulated snow and today we had approximately 800 staff from the various engineering departments all engaged in snow clearance of some fashion.

It has certainly been a very trying time for many of our citizens and a good reason that the pre-existing snow clearance policy be reviewed along with many other city services. I hope that this helps to clarify what Mayor Robertson and City Council has and intends to do.

This rather sounds like a prepared response, but a response is certainly better than none at all. So I thank Mr.Louie for his reply. It is certainly in accordance with what new governmental bodies usually do, by blaming the older city policies and government and promising to review new ones.

Meanwhile, Mayor Gregor Robertson finally appeared to explain what’s been happening behind the scenes of Snowmageddon. Mr.Robertson says the city has spent $2.8 million on clearing main streets of snow, dipping into the contingency fund for this money, and that’s certainly money well-spent, since I shudder to think what chaos it would have been without the contingency fund. But that does not address the absolute insanity that every sidestreet from UBC to Langley is like, and the thousands of cars that have been stuck and needed towing every single day. Mr.Robertson also said he would try to enforce bylaws to get businesses to clear ice and snow from their walks, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with the fact that people can neither walk anywhere in the city or drive anywhere since nothing outside of the main streets have been ploughed or shovelled. My friend Bruce Stewart had to abandon his car yesterday because he was stuck on a side street, and had to pay towing costs to have it freed. My car was also stuck today and needed a push from a neighbour. My parking spot was pirated upon my return so I crashlanded it in a snowbank, but part of my car is still somewhat in the thoroughfare.

The blog City Caucus wasn’t impressed with Mr.Robertson’s answers, saying there were contradictions in the amount of ploughs deployed, the amount of money spent, and the wishful thinking that the rain will soon remove the congestion. As Michael Klassen says, this is utterly inexcusable after a 9 day blackout to the media from Vision Vancouver. And it’s quite interesting to see the same old tired rhetoric of “climate change” coming from the Vision party prior to the election, and now Mr.Robertson is saying this snowfall was a “once in a lifetime event”. Indeed? But how can that be reconciled with the belief that climate change is an inevitability that we are unprepared for?

Writer Frances Bula gets the last word, explaining what her Sunday night drive was like yesterday down the side streets of Vancouver’s snowmageddon:

Just got back (near midnight at this point) from several of hours of driving around the main streets in Vancouver. Don’t ask. Clearly an act of insanity, but the point is that I’ve been on the road for several hours since the snow started falling around 5 p.m.

The streets were and are at the worst ever, since there now seems to be a layer of very rough and patchy compacted ice on all the main arteries. It stays even after the ploughs go by, which I don’t understand since the main streets throughout Vancouver and Burnaby were generally really good the last three weeks, even if everything else still looked like a 19th-century Siberian village.

[...]

For all of you who are wondering what the city of Vancouver’s post-mortem on this is likely to be, I’ve been told that, yes, there will be a review by the engineering department, which happens any time there’s a major engineering event (floods, trees down, etc.) but no, there won’t be a Royal Commission or a Blue Ribbon Panel to analyze the problem. (My snide wording, not theirs.)

IRATEDATE

Gregor apparently told parents today to walk their children to school instead of driving. Uh, sure, but how? Mr.Robertson, have you taken a walk anywhere on a sidewalk in the GVA? My wife can’t push a stroller with our baby five feet, let alone the 2km to the school.