Snow. Hell Yeah

Full Disclosure: As usual my views are my own. Year-round cyclist, winter-lover, and one who likes re-orienting your personal windmill-tilting.

Let's get this party started.

If I hear one more person whine and complain about how much better snow removal is in Montreal or Toronto, or Ottawa or Winnipeg, or wherever you may have lived before that had great snow removal, I'm going to lose my freaking mind. Get over it, or get your priorities in order and decide what it is you want to complain about.

I'll lay bets that the same people complaining about snow removal are the same ones who forced the City to amend the bike lane trial prior to the end of the pilot period. But I digress...

The issue here today is the continual whining about snow removal and how hard you feel your life is because the City hasn't cleared every damn flake from your side street within a nanosecond of the snow leaving the clouds above. People just don't seem to understand that if the City spends more on snow removal, your taxes will have to go up, or you'll have to do with reduced service in some other area. Why is this the case?

Here's why: There are only 92,000 of us living in what is becoming a sprawling, sub-urban, residential warren of vinyl siding and big lots. We take up a lot of space. The math is frighteningly easy to comprehend:

(Few people + lots of space + snow) / shared cost of removal = the speed at which snow is removed

There are only three ways to speed up snow removal in a city like Red Deer. 

1. Pay more - but you don't want to do that

2. Take up less space by living more densely - you don't want to that either

3. Embrace climate change and wait for the end of snow - this one depends on how you feel about climate change.

There is no fourth option. The reason that Montreal has a great snow removal system is that there are 1.8 Million people there. The population density is 2205/km2. That's a lot of people who don't take up a lot of real-estate. There are fewer kilometres/person requiring snow removal. By comparison, Red Deer has a population density of 868 people/km2. Montreal is 2.5 times more densely populated than Red Deer. They have more people to pay for proportionally less space, from which snow needs to be removed.

So, complain about snow removal if you want. Maybe you'll even make it more efficient. However, don't complain when your 2013 tax increase is directly tied to a line-item in the budget for snow clearing.