They look like ass. The stringers are too close together (leaving way too much of treads unsupported), pbly undersized, and how are they anchored? No risers behind the treads…just begging for a broken ankle. Whatever that top landing structure is…just no. Handrail might pass muster for a yard deck in a code-free rural township, but isn’t fit-for-purpose under any appreciable traffic. And the boxed gravel lower landings are pbly just set on the dirt; one winter’s frost heave will turn them into premiere trip hazards.
For an old retired couple to toddle down to their pond one last summer before they croak, it’s a nice gesture. But for a municipality with year-long code and liability concerns, no no no.
They do look safer than what was there before, but…
… any competent lawyer would advice going with a stairway that met code, if for no reason other than to counter/fight flagrant lawsuits from anyone injured while using the stairway. And… YES… $65k sounds way too much.
are you sure about that? I can get them taken down for about $20 per day. All we would need then is to know what the local code is and to build stairs that meet it. I bet that would be less than $65K
The guy who built the expectation clearly didn’t see it as the be-all and end-all of the stair situation
I disagree. (And BTW, the “good on him” comment came from the Reddit post I quoted, not me)
If he were presenting this as a stopgap, then he wouldn’t be comparing his $550 to the $65K. He’d have said something like “We need something here until the city can put in a more permanent solution.” Instead, he’s essentially saying “Look at how stupid the city is. I built these stairs for $550, but they say it will cost $65K.”
And sure, they look good now, but I have to wonder how good they’ll look in a year or two of heavy traffic, rain, and snow. In particular, the dirt on the slope around the stairs looks very susceptible to rainwater runoff.
Perhaps the town could leave it up with a huge “USE AT OWN RISK!” sign (since it does look somewhat safer than the bare hill when covered with ice), then replace it with the much better one they are planning to put in.
I think the guy’s heart is in the right place. But I agree with previous commenters that his complaint that $65k is too expensive may be wrong, because a permanent set of stairs that lasts a long time is a lot more expensive than it might seems. I doubt the wood is going to last 10 years, and it sure doesn’t look appropriate for a park.
Speaking as a professional carpenter, someone is going to get seriously hurt on these so-called “stairs”. It’s only a matter of time. Just no. Better to have people crawl down a rocky slope where the danger is understood than to have them step on a poorly supported stair tread or grab a poorly mounted handrail and have it give way. Or worse, have the whole structure tip over on a busy traffic day. If the city of Toronto allows these to stay, they are opening themselves up to liability far exceeding $65k.
Yeah, the fill in the steps doesn’t look like it’ll handle traffic or weather like heavy rains.
Part of the expense when the city does it is to cover themselves from any crazy lawsuit that might result.
How crazy does it get? Toronto had to ban all kite-flying in city parks because some a-holes were leaving special kite-fighting strings (wire) lying around, someone could get hurt by them, and the city would be the big target with money in a lawsuit. They eventually changed that, with expensive exceptions and much confusion.
That’s not just a hypothetical set of injuries – people have already been injured there according to the post:
“Astl says members of his gardening group have been thanking him for taking care of the project, especially after one of them broke her wrist falling down the slope last year.”
At least one good thing has come out of this: it’s brought (a lot) of attention to the problem. That should speed the wheels of government to actually take action – the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Not to mention 3) The money is already earmarked in a budget line item and it is easier to spend what you got than reallocate the savings later.
I mean let’s say they come in under at the end of the year; they may save X-thousands of dollars but it is really hard to move it to another project/department after the fact, and they may lose that funding next year when they may actually need it.
Plus it isn’t like they are just setting the money on fire in a lot behind city hall; I know it’s easy to get outraged over public spending, but its still supporting local businesses and civil servants (which are huge sources of local, stable employment opportunities). Wanna guess what happens when retired busy-bodies and homeless people do all the work worth doing?
If all of us took the safety and convenience of our friends and neighbors as seriously as this man does (instead of waiting for government to act) we’d at least be making the right kind of mistakes.
I don’t like the support on those stairs, but I am sure they are fine temporarily. But the rules for municipal contracts are often silly and wasteful. I know that a couple of thousand dollars could get you stone steps, or at least concrete, with a welded pipe handrail.
I have been building a lot of granite steps lately. The materials are not cheap, but there is no way that even solid granite steps would cost you 10K in materials.
When my company is working under government contracts, we are supposed to go through all the crappy procurement and bidding when we need work done or parts to keep the equipment running. On the other hand, I can usually order the parts on the internet with my debit card, and submit an expense report later. That takes 1/10th the cost and 1/100th the time that the normal procurement system would take.
What cities need is crews that can do concrete or carpentry work themselves, under the guidance of the people who would inspect the work anyway. It has to be less expensive to have trained personnel working full time for the municipality than to pay for all the contractors and subcontractors.
Well, extrapolating from Vancouver’s trends in building stairs on hillsides such as the one pictured, the City would build concrete stairs into the slope rather than building stairs on the slope. So, yeah, that’d cost a lot more than $450, since you’d spend quite a bit of time excavating, depending on how much rock is in the slope (it looks like a lot)… the soil is silty in Toronto, so you’d need to dig extra deep and fill in with gravel or the stairs would heave in the winter.
If accessibility is an issue and you’re going to put a ramp in as well, then you’re excavating the entire slope.
Of course the city needs to do things right, build it professionally and to code etc… - but it’s not just this kind of stunt that drive people to “mindless populism” - its when you see them dig up the road to work on the sewer and not long after dig it up again to work on the water… When I lived in Winnipeg I watched two city workers spend a whole day painting a fire hydrant. Or hearing about things like the City of Hamilton firing a bunch of workers after the GPS on vehicles indicated they weren’t actually working Later, in Vancouver I had a neighbour worked for the city who jokingly laughed about being on the job while he was relaxing in his backyard.
