Aurora is one giant snow job if you’re on your feet or a bike and trying to get somewhere in the city on the area’s odd hodgepodge of sidewalks.
Trying to trek through a couple feet of glacial ice, snow and road debris is really just the top of the iceberg. The bigger problem is people who don’t drive cars in Aurora are second-class citizens, and we all know it.
The world of walkers, bike, bus and skateboard riders are mostly seen as poor and minority folks too unfortunate to have a car. That despite city, medical, state and a host of other government and loud-mouth officials all talking the talk about how we need to ensure that our communities are walkable. They go on about how fat and unhealthy we’ve become and that just taking to our feet instead of our cars could save our health, our lives and even our planet.
It’s mostly talk. I know, because I walk the walk. Whether it’s good fortune or a whack notion of what’s a good time, I have always been a hoofer, biker, hiker, skier — anything but a please-don’t-make-me-sit-in-that-car-in-traffic kind of guy. All year, and, honestly, in all weather.
You’d be shocked at what I see all over Aurora as I traipse along. The reality is, you probably don’t care. You don’t care that the city is built on getting you from here to there in your car. Accommodating pedestrians, bikers and skateboarders became an inconvenient afterthought.
Try it. Try and walk from Iliff and Peoria to Parker Road. You can’t even get there on the west side of the street, because the sidewalks end. On the east? The city allowed developers to use shrunken sidewalks that put pedestrians right into the torrent of traffic on Peoria. It’s down the street from one of the region’s busiest bus and light rail stations. Further north are a huge high school, middle school and magnet school.
When it snows? Bummer for you.
Here’s the deal. You must shovel your sidewalk. If you think the city is overstepping when it makes you clear snow, pick up your trash, keep your dog on a leash and pick up its poop, then move away. Green Acres is the place to be, not Village East.
After it snows, you have 24 hours to get out there and clear the sidewalk in front of your house. If you don’t, the city can come knocking and ask nice. If you still don’t do it, you pay a fine. And if you still won’t clear the glacial morass off your sidewalk, the city will do it and send you the bill — in theory.
In practice? Well, everyone in Aurora has their own reality when it comes to dealing with snow.
If you’ve been a mile-higher for anytime at all, you know the drill. Snow today, sun tomorrow. Problem solved. Of course there are those pesky exceptions when the snow doesn’t actually melt. Like this winter. Snow and continued cold meant one thing: the snow stayed right where you left it.
I’m not whining about this because ain’t it awful to have to trudge through a little snow to get to school or take Bonkers out for his daily defecation and constitutional. I’m talking about sidewalks piled so deep with glacial strata that only someone with crampons, line and nerves of steel can navigate them to get to the bus stop, to school. the doctor, to work, the airport.
It isn’t so much snow in front of neighborhood sidewalks that offers up the walk from hell; it’s sidewalks on Aurora arterials, especially those next to walled neighborhoods.
The law says you’re re responsible for the sidewalks adjacent to your property, even if sidewalk is behind your 6-foot fence and separated from your property by city owned grass, median, easement or buffer.
Yes, really. It’s a nightmare for people who live in the middle of a miles-long block that virtually have to walk forever to get to the patch of sidewalk they’re responsible for. City spokeswoman Lori McKenzie says officials are aware of the inconvenience, and so they cut those homeowners some slack. But about 300 people each snow season don’t get slack. They get tickets for not clearing away snow.
And the biggest controversy, especially on arterial roads? Homeowner associations and businesses pay big money to clear long sidewalks, and the city plows snow right back on them as they clear roads.
The city knows it. The HOAs and businesses know it, and it’s all just so sad, too bad for hoofers.
Dam East HOA president Joe Paull said his association takes snow very seriously and spends a lot of money removing it from streets and sidewalks, including its perimeter on Peoria. He knows that once cleared, the city often plows snow right back on, just like it did during the last two big spring storms.
“But we can’t afford to keep plowing it,” he said.
Ptarmigan Park HOA management company president Natasha Henricks said snow removal is a big and rising cost for the neighborhood, and she, too, is aware of the law and makes sure crews keep the neighborhood in compliance.
“The city’s first priority is to always keep roads passable for emergency response and public safety,” McKenzie said. “Once that need is met, the city will use its resources to assist in clearing sidewalks.”
I’ve never seen this in three years on Peoria Street near Iliff. Makes total sense unless you don’t have a car. And if you’re not a hiker-biker-skier that will just mutter under your breath, and you’re elderly, disabled or not a Colorado Bighorn Sheep, it’s toughies for you. The city doesn’t actually go out looking for violations, they react only when residents call them in to Access Aurora.
Imagine if the city made one pass at streets during a storm and said, “That’s it. We did our job.”
Of course they wouldn’t. Public safety is at stake. Unfortunately, your safety as a pedestrian in Aurora isn’t as important as your safety as a motorist.
The problem is, it would cost money to consider pedestrian traffic and safety equally as important as our national pastime, commuting in cars. And until someone can persuade a majority of six city council representatives differently, just expect more snow jobs if you’re a hoofer in Aurora.
Follow Dave Perry as @EditorDavePerry on Facebook and Twitter, or you can reach him at dperry@aurorasentinel.com.