I want to give a massive shoutout to the city of Ottawa for continuing to maintain the parts of this path system that they’ve committed to, to the best of their ability (and it has really been solid!). This has made school drop-off every day this winter on foot way easier (not to mention getting around the community whenever we need to!).
In past years before these paths were maintained, when I was bringing my kids to kindergarten and daycare, if (when, realistically) it snowed a bunch, this would look very different. You can basically picture the exact landscape from this picture, except instead of having a neat path cut through it, it is just a giant impassable mountain.
The unspoken but excellent thing about this end result (a walkable path system) is that typically the paths are cleared very early in the process, within 4-6 hours of the snow being done, and sometimes while snow is still falling. Later, since this connects to a side street that isn’t cleared very often, a plow will usually come by and clear the whole street. That street clearing tends to leave a giant snowbank piled right in front of the mouth of the path, which obviously isn’t ideal. In this case, though, the path plow has been excellent about coming back within a short time after the plow has come to clear the path again, which leads to the image you see at the top of this post.
This snow clearing makes this path walkable and gives many community residents access to the neighbourhood and nearby schools, without requiring people to get around on short trips using only their cars. It also gives the active older population of the community a safe way to get moving in the fresh air without resorting to walking on the streets or risking falling trying to trudge through deep or dense snow.
The fact that the city has prioritized maintaining these connections has made a huge difference in the walkability of the community, and hopefully we will be able to get more paths in the area upgraded to be plowable so the whole extensive park system can all be accessible through the winter.
Great work!
Contrast the extremely clear and accessible path above with the situation 2 years ago in January when I first started asking about this:
This is basically the same view as above except not only was the path not cleared, but you had to blaze a trail of your own around a literal mountain to get through, only to need to trudge through deep snow on the other side as well to get to school.
I could make it through here, but my kids definitely weren’t making the walk with a toboggan to pull them in, and it was a huge workout even as a relatively fit person in my 30s. It is SO much better now.
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