Bring the heat: St. John's councillor wants to warm Water Street sidewalks

A St. John's city councillor is floating an idea he believes could mean the end of salt, sand and ice underfoot in downtown St. John's.

Sandy Hickman has asked city staff to look into installing heated sidewalks on Water Street to reduce snow-clearing demands and make the downtown safer for pedestrians.

"Downtown needs a little shot in the arm, I think, and I'm just trying to come up with ideas," Hickman said.

Hickman said sidewalks along two blocks of Water Street are due to come up in the next few months as part of a separate construction job, and he believes it's the perfect time to launch a pilot project to investigate heating methods.

The councillor pitched his idea to run heated coils or tubes under the pavement at a council meeting Monday.

"This is an opportunity to at least look at whether it would be heating coils of electrical or whether it be hot water," he said.

Hickmanadmits he doesn't know how much such a project would cost, but he thinks if the technology works, it could actually save the city money on its snow-clearing budget.

A few test cases

Heated sidewalks are not exactly common, but a number of other Canadian cities, likely as winter-weary as St. John's, have also considered it.

Montreal shelved its plans in 2018, after the cost to heat 3.3 kilometres ballooned to $120 million, the Montreal Gazette reported.

In the Icelandic city of Reykjavik, thermal energy harvested from hot springs is piped into tubes in the sidewalks, heating them up at low cost.

With no naturally occuring hot springs near St. John's, the cost to generate heat would almost certainly be higher on this side of the ocean, but Hickman still thinks it's worth investigating.

He got the idea from a magazine article on the topic.

"All I know is that it's been on the go for decades in Europe and the city of Holland in Michigan has five miles of it in their downtown and it works exceptionally well for them."

How well does it work?

The St. John's Morning Show contactedcity staff in Holland, Mich., to find out if snow-melting sidewalks really could work. Holland installed its first stretches of heated pavement in the late 1980s.

"The benefits are fantastic," said Holland city manager Keith Van Beek.

"We have extended pavement life, reduced slip-and-fall. Our downtown is known for this. We have a very strong downtown environment with our shops and our restaurants."

Holland has added more heated sidewalks, and even some stretches of heated road,overthe last three decades. Van Beek says the first 250,000 square feet cost $1.1 million US in 1988.

The city now has 600,000 square feet of heated pavement.

"We figure that was probably about $3.5 million total of original construction cost," Van Beek said.

"That's where the real cost is."

Van Beek said the system costs a couple hundred thousand dollars a year but saves on salt and snow clearing.

Captured heat from a natural gas plant keeps the cost down; no additional heat has to be generated to operate the system.

Van Beek said the project probably wouldn't have happened without sizeable private donations, but now heated sidewalks have become a part of the city's identity.

"It's really a staple of our community."

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