Counting on street salt to pave approach for protected circumstances is not sustainable, columnist says
It’s Dec. 24 and the world is a basic Christmas winter wonderland. Our resident cardinal flashes by on his breakfast feeder go to.
Sadly, Ontario’s highways current a hazardous, much less bucolic scene. It usually appears Ontario’s drivers should study to deal with winter from scratch — yearly.
Six a long time in the past, I realized to drive in Montreal and on nation roads across the metropolis. Salt was not used then. Snow-covered metropolis streets regularly darkened to beige with dust; rural highways remained white for days.
Then, Montreal winters featured temperatures between -10 and -30 levels Celsius; the countryside usually dipped to a bone-chilling -40 C. At the moment, automobiles had an engine in entrance driving the rear wheels. Most drivers, my father included, made do with only a pair of snow tires on the rear wheels.
I used to be extra cautious and put 4 snow tires on my small automotive, paying additional to have them drilled for metallic studs — 180 studs per wheel. With extraordinary management on slippery roads, I loved watching automobiles in my mirror following me round curves drive right into a ditch. That wasn’t good, however I used to be younger.
Someday, freezing rain glazed my dad’s lengthy, steep driveway with ice. I took him by the hand and we slid, uncontrolled, all the way down to the road. Unable to stroll again up, we took the (icy) stairs again into the home. I then sat him in my automotive, accelerated down the driveway, braked earlier than we hit the road, after which reversed again as much as the storage.
“Now, Dad, will you buy studded snow tires?”
“No.”
Nonetheless, I consider he by no means crashed.
On the time, Montreal had a fleet of big Sicard snow blowers on particular vehicles. Plows scraped snow to the aspect of the road. The Sicard adopted, hurling the snow onto folks’s lawns.
In 1965, Montreal started to experiment with street salt. Initially, it solely salted intersections, however quickly expanded to entire streets. Folks complained that the salt-laden snow poisoned their flower beds, hedges, and lawns.
Town was compelled to make use of its Sicard machines to fill vehicles with this snow, and dumped this into the St. Lawrence River. On the time, salting the river didn’t matter; no downstream municipality used river water. (Montreal solely started treating its sewage in 1984.)
One other answer to the salt downside would have been to desert its use, leaving hard-packed snow on the streets. With the low winter temperatures Montreal skilled then, hard-packed snow provided good grip. Additionally, very chilly ice is way much less slippery than you would possibly anticipate.
In 1968, I left Canada to work as a Cuso volunteer in Nairobi, Kenya. After 4 years in Africa, I accepted a tenured educational publish in Britain, and didn’t return to Canada till 1988. The icy, chilly winters I knew had gone. At present, Montreal not often experiences temperatures under -10 C and winter thaws are frequent. The place I used to carve a cave out of the snow berm on the backside of our yard, Montreal’s snow now not lasts by winter.
Returning to right here and now, Ontario pours tens of millions of tonnes of salt on our roads each winter. Required by legislation, that is set out in Ontario Regulation 239/02, Half 5.
In consequence, Ontario’s roads are nearly all the time moist. Heavy vehicles and truck-like gentle autos create harmful spray of their wake all through winter, tremendously lowering visibility for following autos.
Greater than 40 years in the past, European rules required heavy vehicles and buses to put in particular mud flaps, which lowered the quantity of spray by 80 to 90 per cent. It’s a pity comparable rules have been by no means developed in North America.
In the meantime, tire producers developed particular rubber compounds designed to grip snow and ice much more securely than can the rubber in “all-season” tires.
Many people who skilled studded tires appreciated them for an essential attribute. That they had comparable grip on all street circumstances: packed snow, moist roads, ice, slush, and dry pavement.
At present’s winter tires, made from softer, porous, hydrophilic (“water-loving”) rubber and designed with their distinctive multi-siped (many small grooves) tread design, are nearly as efficient on ice as studded tires, and simply equal or higher than them on snow. Even when studded tires have been allowed in Ontario, I’m not positive I’d select them over a contemporary winter tire.
However, again to street salting. This inflicts appreciable environmental injury to floor water. The salt content material of our personal Lake Simcoe has been growing steadily for half a century, starting after we began to make use of salt in a futile try to banish winter. Makes an attempt to cut back the appliance price (the Sensible About Salt program) have had no affect on this upward development. (See graph under.) Discount in utility charges was merely overwhelmed by city sprawl, creating evermore roads calling for salt utility.
Lengthy earlier than our water turns into too salty to drink (the restrict is 230 milligrams per litre chloride; the East Holland River is already there; Hewitt’s and Lover’s creeks are midway), we may have dramatically modified the spectrum of life in our lakes and streams. Many crustacea, larvae and bugs are very delicate to salt, so they’ll die off. These are meals for our fish and different fauna. If our fish are sad with their newly salty habitat, what’s going to substitute them? What’s going to our sport anglers assume?
We pay a heavy worth for our dependancy to street salt. Corrosion triggered by street salt compelled the alternative of Montreal’s Champlain Bridge simply half a century after it first opened — costing greater than $4.2 billion. Elliot Lake’s Algo Centre Mall roof collapsed in 2012, killing two folks and injuring 20. This was attributed to corrosion as a consequence of street salt from automobiles parked on the mall’s roof.
Bridges throughout our 400-series highways have been repaired as a consequence of “concrete cancer” (salt-accelerated corrosion of strengthened concrete). Cities throughout Ontario have needed to substitute road furnishings (gentle requirements, energy poles, bus shelters, and many others.) broken by street salt. Highway salt damages leather-based footwear and canine paws.
If that isn’t sufficient to persuade us, take into account security. Highway salting’s purpose is clearing all snow to reveal black pavement. Whereas that’s laudable, take into account the problems in attaining that purpose.
One trendy technique of making use of salt to the street floor is to spray a skinny coating of brine answer earlier than a snowfall. The aim of that is to forestall a brand new snowfall from adhering to the street. That, in flip, permits a snow plow to take away a lot of the snow in a single go.
Sadly, in case you drive on this street earlier than the plow has arrived, your winter tires will grip the snow, however snow pads beneath your wheels will slide on the street as a result of the snow can’t persist with it. I doubt anybody might compile statistics on what number of crashes have been attributable to this situation, however I’ve usually skilled it — and have quietly cursed the apply.
In summer time, the Metropolis of Barrie installs pace bumps on many streets, making an attempt to gradual automobiles close to colleges and in quiet residential areas. These are eliminated earlier than winter; in any other case, the municipal plow would take away them violently.
I’d counsel a great way to gradual automobiles is to maintain the street “white,” leaving it lined with packed snow. Autos with correct winter tires may have glorious grip. Coupled with lowered pace, this could enhance security.
I started writing in a snowstorm and completed every week later in one other. Town has not plowed my quick road in three days. My small world is picture-postcard clear and white. My top-of-the-line winter tires defend me 24/7; winter street upkeep usually doesn’t.
It’s excessive time for Ontario to require all passenger autos to have winter tires, simply as Quebec has executed for years. Quebec handed such a legislation in 2008. Drivers should set up winter tires between Dec. 1 and March 15. Since then, the variety of street deaths on Quebec’s roads has halved.
So, why don’t we do that? If we do, we are able to additionally scale back the variety of roads to be salted.
And, it’s time we require faculty buses to have winter tires. In spite of everything, they carry our most valuable cargo.
Barrie resident Peter Bursztyn is a self-proclaimed “recovering scientist” who has a ardour for all issues primarily based in science and the surroundings. The now-retired former college educational has taught and carried out analysis at universities in Africa, Britain and Canada, and is a former NDP candidate regionally. As a member of BarrieToday’s group advisory board, he additionally writes a semi-regular column.
