Despite the current deep freeze, we’ve had a remarkably mild—some would say anemic—winter so far. (Thanks, climate change.) Still, there have already been a couple of nasty sleet- and snowstorms, and for days afterward, you didn’t have to look hard to find unshoveled sidewalks and impassable bike lanes.
Last winter, a challenging season that included our city’s fifth-heaviest recorded snowfall, CDOT wrote only 226 citations for failure to shovel. Meanwhile, Evanston, with about 1/36th the population of Chicago, issued 53 tickets for noncompliance, according to Evanston city staffer Carl Caneva. That’s more than eight times CDOT’s ticketing rate.
The new legislation also lays out the required time frame for clearance: snow that falls between 7 AM and 7 PM must be cleared by 10 PM, while snow that falls overnight needs to be removed by 10 AM the next morning.
Last week, transportation chief Rebekah Scheinfeld confirmed that the city has no plans to boost the number of citations issued. So far this winter, CDOT has written 74 warnings, mostly to commercial and multiunit buildings, and zero tickets.
I asked whether the city has considered hiring more inspectors, perhaps seasonal workers whose wages could be paid via fees, or emulating Evanston’s practice of billing property owners for shoveling by contractors. Scheinfeld says neither of those ideas is on the table at the moment.
Again, Scheinfeld recommends reporting trouble spots to 311, which recently added a special category for noting snow in bike lanes and at Divvy stations. The Active Transportation Alliance also suggests taking a photo and sharing it on social media with the city’s #ChicagoShovels hashtag, as well as reaching out to businesses owners, chambers of commerce, and aldermen.
