West Coast Now
When a heavy snowfall walloped southern B.C. this week, making it difficult to use many roads and sidewalks, Phil Marciniak decided to take matters into his own hands.
The Saanich local rigged up a snow plow to an electric bike and began clearing snow himself.
“It works pretty well, I’m surprised,” he told CBC On the Island.
Marciniak, who runs an electric bike business, said his original motivation was hunger: he wanted to grab some takeout from a favourite Vietnamese restaurant.
But now his do-it-yourself plowing has turned into more of an obsession.
Videos on his Twitter page show him ripping around Greater Victoria, sometimes reaching speeds above 20 km per hour.
“I cleared the bike lane and sidewalk in front of municipal Hall around 6 pm today,” he explains in one recent video.
The design has improved too. “Marciniak says his latest split-shovel design is much easier to handle than his older designs. His e-cargo bike is equipped with two large snow shovels in front of the front tire,” CTV News reports.
The heavy snow will likely be sticking around this week.
Environment and Climate Change Canada has issued an Arctic Outflow Warning, explaining that “strong outflow winds are bringing temperatures near 10 degrees below seasonal normals resulting in wind chill values approaching minus 20 over the Greater Victoria and Southern Gulf Islands regions.”
