Back in January 1940, the Buffalo Common Council approved Buffalo, The City of Good Neighbors as the official slogan of the City of Buffalo. Unlike many urban branding and marketing efforts, this one has impressive staying power. Over 80 years later, we treat it as a moral mission statement. Buffalo: Talking Proud, on the other hand, now comes off as amusingly pathetic.

Some of my favorite Good Neighbor moments are when the Bills fandom, wherever it may be, rises as one and pours millions of dollars into a good cause, like Damar Hamlin’s charity. When neighbors show up to aid someone burned out of their home or suffering a violent death in the family. When we throw one excellent parade and summer festival after another, solely on volunteer labor. When we join committees, nonprofit boards, or block clubs.

A lot of you lose this Buffalo ethic the minute you get behind the wheel, though. As someone who usually walks or bikes everywhere, I see it almost daily. Most of you are conscientious most of the time. But when you’re not, you risk maiming or killing someone.

A lot of you lose this Buffalo ethic the minute you get behind the wheel. I see it almost daily. Most of you are conscientious most of the time. But when you’re not, you risk maiming or killing someone.

There was the time I was walking to work in temperatures around 5F. Dress properly and walking in ordinary winter weather is no big deal. Standing still is what’s risky. I got to an intersection, waited for my Walk signal, and when it arrived, was marooned by a string of drivers making illegal right-on-reds. One driver after another in comfy upholstered seats with the heat on would not brake for me though I had the right of way. You do know you’re required to come to a full stop and let pedestrians cross before taking that right-on-red? Did I mention it was 5F? 

Another classic is the look-left-turn-right maneuver. Lots of you do not look both ways when you’re heading into intersections. You gun it before checking if someone is on foot on your right. Not to mention treating stop signs as optional. “I just didn’t see her, Officer.” 

This one is particularly creepy. Literally. Someone is crossing in front of you and you start accelerating towards them before they have cleared your path. This is vehicular bullying.

Then there’s blocking crosswalks at intersections, forcing someone crossing the street to choose between passing in front of you dangerously close to traffic or risk getting crushed by a distracted driver behind you.

Speaking of distracted drivers, last week I watched a guy lean over and take a bong hit while starting his right-on-red. Without looking up. Usually, you’re sober but fixated on your cell phones instead. I often wonder when I’ll be the casualty of someone who cannot put the phone down.

About 1 in 3 households in Buffalo is without a private vehicle, which means a lot of us bike, walk, and use public transit. Try imagining that every person outside of your vehicle is your mom or dad taking your baby for a walk. Good neighbors don’t casually endanger others when they hop in their cars.

Illustration by author, 2023.

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.

Share and use the hashtag #PlowSidewalksToo

Related: Why We Need Municipal Sidewalk Plowing

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

This essay originally appeared as a My View column in The Buffalo News on Feb. 5, 2013 and has since been edited, updated, and expanded. Image shows elderly couple walking in street due to unplowed sidewalks. One of them is pushing the other in a wheelchair. Photo taken by author on Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY, January 2020, all rights reserved.

When I moved to Buffalo in 1992, I was shocked to discover that the city does not plow sidewalks. How could that be, in a place that gets so much snow?

I grew up in Rochester, where sidewalks were and still are plowed at public expense. Rochester has 37 square miles; Buffalo has 42. Its population is 210,855; ours is 261,025 (2010 census). Rochester’s population and economy have declined as much as Buffalo’s, yet its government continues to provide sidewalk plowing while ours pleads poverty. It plows sidewalks for average cost of $40 per household per year (as of Nov. 2022).

In Buffalo, property owners are required by law to clear sidewalks in front of their homes and businesses. We are expected get out and shovel to show the world that we are truly the City of Good Neighbors. If we don’t, it must be because we are antisocial lazybones who deserve their annual scolding from The Buffalo News. This popular sentiment reflects idealism about who we wish we were more than realism about how to maintain essential public infrastructure. This law is a failure.

When I walk my 1.5 mile route to work, let us say for the sake of argument that I pass 250 houses and businesses. For me to have a fully cleared path, all 250 must shovel, sweep, snowblow and/or salt to the same standard after each and every snowfall. What level of compliance constitutes success? Eighty percent? Meaning that for every five addresses, four are shoveled, so I have to detour into the street for only 20 percent of my route? How about frequency of shoveling? If owners shovel their sidewalk after four out of five fresh snowfalls, is that satisfactory?

Let’s say that Buffalo’s 15 percent vacancy rate, the highest in the state, is reflected in my route and 15 percent of the addresses I pass are vacant or demolished. Who shall we ticket for impassable sidewalks in front of abandoned lots and buildings? Who is responsible for clearing the sidewalks fronting city-owned parking lots? These are purposely situated near commercial corridors that depend on foot traffic. The city, which is now our single largest land owner, does not obey its own shoveling laws.

Next, let us factor in everything that interferes with adjacent-owner sidewalk clearance: physical limitations, out-of-town travel, lack of awareness, absentee landlords, too many other responsibilities and, most egregiously, snowplow operators who clear streets, parking lots, and driveways by dumping snow onto sidewalks.

Nevertheless, since we’ve decided that owner shoveling is the ideal way to clear sidewalks, then why don’t we sell our street plows and lay off snowplow drivers to save on taxes, and require car owners to shovel out their own streets, with a hefty dose of editorial page shaming if they do not?

We do not burden individuals in this way because one household failing to shovel would impede all drivers and all vehicles. We plow our streets at public expense to provide safe, consistent, and equitable access. We also recognize that streets are public, not private property, and must be maintained at public expense.

Here’s the kicker: so are sidewalks. “My” sidewalk does not belong to me at all. Pedestrians deserve the same safe, consistent, and equitable access to public right-of-ways as vehicles. Automobiles spend over 90% of the time parked, meaning that 90% of the time, we are pedestrians instead of drivers. Thirty percent of Buffalo households do not own cars. Street budgets should reflect these realities.

The present situation is an equal protection violation: Buffalo taxpayers inside of motor vehicles are entitled to right-of-ways cleared at public expense, while Buffalo taxpayers outside of motor vehicles are not. Even worse, they are subject to penalties if they fail to maintain public property.

So tax me. Please! Then tax me some more to pay for sidewalk plowing in low-income neighborhoods.

#PlowSidewalksToo

Related: Top Twenty Reasons for Municipal Sidewalk Plowing in Buffalo

Updated December 3, 2020