- 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.
- It promotes year-round walkability for all residents, workers, and visitors, thus serving the explicit goals of the new Green Code.
- It promotes better air quality. People who can count on consistently cleared sidewalks will leave the car at home more often.
- It promotes healthy movement and exercise. People who can count on consistently cleared sidewalks will walk more often to their destinations.
- Because there is no such thing as 100% compliance with private shoveling mandates, resulting in patchwork accessibility at best.
- Sidewalk plowing can be contracted out to bidders who provide their own equipment, thus avoiding a larger public payroll and higher capital expenditures.
- It makes city living more affordable and competitive by reducing the need to support a private automobile.
- It addresses the problem of high-vacancy neighborhoods, where there are no owners to fine for not shoveling.
- 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.
- It saves lives of pedestrians. People forced to walk in the street risk being injured and killed by drivers.
- It enables customers to continue patronizing businesses during storms and driving bans.
- It reduces the demand for ever more on- and off-street parking.
- It serves the roughly 30% of Buffalo households who do not own automobiles.
- It is cheaper per household than hiring neighborhood kids or private contractors to do it
- It complies with the Americans With Disabilities Act
- It enables children to develop independence instead of having to be chauffeured everywhere by their parents.
- It enables senior citizens to retain their independence instead of having to be chauffeured everywhere by their kids.
- It enables all who do not or cannot drive to get from here to there.
- It complies with the constitutional principles of equal access and equal protection.
- It promotes Buffalo as a year-round destination and shows the world that we control snow, it doesn’t control us.
Share and use the hashtag #PlowSidewalksToo
Sign the petition for sidewalk plowing in Buffalo
Related: Why We Ned Municipal Sidewalk Plowing
Edited November 21, 2021. Photograph courtesy of @D_S_F_J_, location unknown
BuffaloResearch.com 