On Christmas Eve around 7:15 a plow truck with a massive curved blade pushed hard-packed snow onto a 60-metre-long sidewalk from the Balfour ferry parking lot to Busk Road.
The sidewalk, clearly defined by being kept open last winter by senior volunteers, was a safe path far from the highway. It was used by virtually everyone. With the sidewalk filled with packed snow, we have to walk out on the pavement, which is the highway. There we have vehicles zoom close by as they tangent to Busk.
The gravel shoulder is triple wide along this portion of highway — plenty of room to pile snow without interfering with the walkway. As in shoveling snow by hand, where you put the snow is as important as where you take it from.
Pedestrians have a right to a safe route in an area that puts them in such close proximity with traffic like this. The last time the walk had snow pushed onto it (the previous Monday) it took five man-hours to dig out.
We need a Ministry of Transportation supervisor to take action and assure that the walkway will not be filled in again.
John Kemp
Balfour
