Sidewalk plow breakdowns and a blizzard of 311 calls. City hall debates winter storm response

John Rieti · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 27, 2025 12:32 PM EDT | Last Updated: 8 minutes ago

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow called the city's response to the biggest tempest of this wintertime "a failure." On Thursday afternoon, we'll find retired what metropolis assembly volition bash astir it.

Here's what we're waiting to see.

• Chow is asking the metropolis manager to reappraisal the effect to this winter's storm, which should walk without controversy. 
• But Chow besides wants the auditor wide to bash a deeper reappraisal of the 2021 procurement process that saw 2 companies and their associated task triumph the declaration to wide snowfall successful astir each of Toronto. Will councillors — galore of whom voted to approve that declaration — enactment that?
• Further, volition metropolis assembly request unit question stiffer penalties for the contractors? In precocious 2023, metropolis unit opted to little the liquidated damages the backstage companies face. Chow, speaking with reporters up of that meeting, said: "that was strange."
• Chow besides said she wants to cognize if metropolis unit person acted connected each of the recommendations the auditor wide has made pertaining to snow-clearing. 

What we're learning astir the tempest response

City Manager Paul Johnson answered a bid of questions astir snow-clearing conscionable earlier the gathering that offers a fewer glimpses into the tempest response. Here's what jumps retired from the document. 

The city's sidewalk plows often broke down. The metropolis started clearing downtown sidewalks successful 2021-2022, and owns 59 mini plows to bash the enactment — though conscionable implicit fractional made it retired into the tempest due to the fact that the others were successful for repairs. 

When the tempest deed connected Feb. 8, 34 plows were sent out. Four days later, 36 plows went retired arsenic the snowfall pelted down again. But connected Feb. 15, that fig dropped to 26, meaning little than fractional of the city's fleet was operational.  

Johnson said 60 per cent of the vehicles that were retired of work had conveyance issues, portion 40 per cent had breached down owed to operational issues similar collisions oregon "overloading."

Contractors grip the immense bulk of sidewalk plowing. Just for clarity, due to the fact that it's often hard to decipher who is liable for what successful this snow-clearing debate, contractors grip the bulk of sidewalk clearing. 

Toronto has immoderate 7,900 kilometres of sidewalk. City crews grip 1,461 kilometres of that, per Johnson's report. 

Torontonians filed a batch of complaints. There were 25,318 calls for work to the city's 311 enactment (although Johnson said astir 3,000 were the effect of an inaccurate media study that suggested the metropolis could plow backstage driveways.)

However, that fig would beryllium higher had the metropolis not implemented 3 "blackout periods" for 311 calls arsenic the back-to-back-to-back storms hit.

It's unclear however overmuch the metropolis volition wage for snowfall removal. For clarity, snowfall removal (think: snowfall being loaded into dump trucks and driven retired of your neighbourhood) is antithetic than snow-clearing, and lone happens erstwhile we get much than 25 centimetres of snow, that isn't expected to melt. 

During the large tempest successful 2022, snowfall removal outgo the metropolis $17 million. Johnson said this year's terms won't beryllium made nationalist until July.

We'll beryllium updating this communicative during Thursday afternoon's snow-clearing debate, which you tin besides ticker unrecorded connected YouTube.