Icy sidewalks have become a serious, lingering issue in the city and mayor Valerie Plante has been responding to individual citizens about their complaints on Twitter.
Mayor Street downtown may have some of the worst winter walking conditions in the city.
“It’s treacherous, like truly treacherous,” said Marlie Itovitch, who works on Mayor. “I’ve fallen quite a few times already, actually.”
“If you don’t look really closely, you might slip any second,” said Mayor Street resident Karen Tu.
Those who brave the bumpy, icy sidewalks watch where they step closely.
“I cannot walk there. It’s very hard,” said Kay Chan, who lives on the street.
Most don’t even bother with the sidewalk, opting to walk in the middle of the street instead.
“I was walking in the middle of the road because the sidewalks are so icy and I’m prone to falling. So I don’t want to hurt myself. Montreal should be taking more time to make sure their citizens are safe,” said Itovitch.
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Not only do motorists have to dodge vicious potholes, now they have to dodge pedestrians as well.
Mayor is one of the street’s angry residents have flagged directly to Mayor Plante on Twitter.
One Twitter user told her he’d fallen three times in a week and that he walks on the road instead. The mayor told him the city would send a team.
In another tweet, a local TV personality told the mayor she’s afraid to walk and that bike paths are cleaned before sidewalks.
The mayor responded that there are only 30 kilometers of bike paths compared to 10,000 kilometers of sidewalk.
“We just finished the loading operation, we were actually one day ahead of the schedule,” said city of Montreal spokesman Philippe Sabourin. “That means we will have more crews on the de-icing work and the slippery sidewalks in the next days.”
READ MORE: Several Laval streets covered in snow and ice
Sabourin said about two thirds of sidewalks have been cleaned.
“I fell on my knee a couple of times. It hurt for a while, then you shake it off and keep going,” said McGill student Zoe Craig as she walked on Peel toward her school.
“We need to focus on the residential areas. There are sidewalks that need to be de-iced. We will have enough crews to do the operation, we will go on those streets with massive amounts of salt and we will scrape the sidewalk until the end,” said Sabourin.
With more extreme temperature fluctuations and rain in the forecast, the winter adventure is far from over.
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