Top Twenty Reasons for Municipal Sidewalk Plowing in Buffalo

Cynthia Van Ness
  1. Because sidewalks, like streets, parks, and schools, are public property. Nowhere else in municipal management is it legal to fine and shame private citizens for failing to maintain public property.
  2. It promotes year-round walkability for all residents, workers, and visitors, thus serving the explicit goals of the new Green Code.
  3. It promotes better air quality. People who can count on consistently cleared sidewalks will leave the car at home more often.
  4. It promotes healthy movement and exercise. People who can count on consistently cleared sidewalks will walk more often to their destinations.
  5. Because there is no such thing as 100% compliance with private shoveling mandates, resulting in patchwork accessibility at best.
  6. Sidewalk plowing can be contracted out to bidders who provide their own equipment, thus avoiding a larger public payroll and higher capital expenditures.
  7. It makes city living more affordable and competitive by reducing the need to support a private automobile.
  8. It addresses the problem of high-vacancy neighborhoods, where there are no owners to fine for not shoveling.
  9. It saves lives of shovelers. Every year, Buffalonians suffer heart attacks when they shovel snow. In a region with an increasingly graying population, it is unethical for cities to fine people for opting out of a deadly activity.
  10. It saves lives of pedestrians. People forced to walk in the street risk being injured and killed by drivers.
  11. It enables customers to continue patronizing businesses during storms and driving bans.
  12. It reduces the demand for ever more on- and off-street parking.
  13. It serves the roughly 30% of Buffalo households who do not own automobiles.
  14. It is cheaper per household than hiring neighborhood kids to do it
  15. It complies with the Americans With Disabilities Act
  16. It enables kids to develop independence instead of having to be chauffeured everywhere by their parents.
  17. It enables senior citizens to retain their independence instead of having to be chauffeured everywhere by their kids.
  18. If private citizen shoveling actually worked for sidewalks, we would use it on streets. Sell the plows, lay off the drivers, and save all kinds of tax dollars.
  19. When taxpayers inside of motor vehicles are entitled to right-of-ways cleared at public expense and taxpayers outside of motor vehicles are not, we have an equal protection violation.
  20. It promotes Buffalo as a year-round destination and shows the world that we control snow, it doesn’t control us.
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Related: Why We Need Municipal Sidewalk Plowing

Edited December 3, 2022. Photograph courtesy of @D_S_F_J_, location unknown