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

Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow called the city's response to the biggest storm of this winter "a failure." On Thursday afternoon, we'll find out what city council will do about it.

Here's what we're waiting to see.

City Manager Paul Johnson answered a series of questions about snow-clearing just before the meeting that offers a few glimpses into the storm response. Here's what jumps out from the document. 

The city's sidewalk plows frequently broke down. The city started clearing downtown sidewalks in 2021-2022, and owns 59 mini plows to do the work — though just over half made it out into the storm because the others were in for repairs. 

When the storm hit on Feb. 8, 34 plows were sent out. Four days later, 36 plows went out as the snow pelted down again. But on Feb. 15, that number dropped to 26, meaning less than half of the city's fleet was operational.  

Johnson said 60 per cent of the vehicles that were out of service had vehicle issues, while 40 per cent had broken down due to operational issues like collisions or "overloading."

Contractors handle the vast majority of sidewalk plowing. Just for clarity, because it's often hard to decipher who is responsible for what in this snow-clearing debate, contractors handle the majority of sidewalk clearing. 

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

Torontonians filed a lot of complaints. There were 25,318 calls for service to the city's 311 line (although Johnson said about 3,000 were the result of an inaccurate media report that suggested the city could plow private driveways.)

However, that number would be higher had the city not implemented three "blackout periods" for 311 calls as the back-to-back-to-back storms hit.

It's unclear how much the city will pay for snow removal. For clarity, snow removal (think: snow being loaded into dump trucks and driven out of your neighbourhood) is different than snow-clearing, and only happens when we get more than 25 centimetres of snow, that isn't expected to melt. 

During the major storm in 2022, snow removal cost the city $17 million. Johnson said this year's price won't be made public until July.

We'll be updating this story during Thursday afternoon's snow-clearing debate, which you can also watch live on YouTube.