Imagine walking along a downtown sidewalk that’s completely free of snow and ice, all thanks to heated sidewalks.

The City of Saskatoon is considering is the idea as part of its sweeping city centre plan to improve life in the downtown core.

It’s still in the very early planning stages, but the installation of hot water piping under cement sidewalks that would melt the snow is not as far-fetched as it seems. The technology is already in use on sidewalks outside of the National Research Council building on the University of Saskatchewan campus.

"We decided to look at different ways to deal with the sidewalks for staff safety,” Bill Dean, the NRC’s site operations manager, said of the sidewalks installed in 2002. Unused heat from the building is funneled into pipes built into the concrete and sensors on the sidewalk turn the heat on when water or snow is detected.

The city is looking into this technology for downtown sidewalks in areas that will be re-developed.

“That might be an opportunity to explore it because we will be tearing up the sidewalks and rebuilding them to begin with,” said Alan Wallace, director of the city’s planning and development division

Saskatoon isn't the only North American city thinking about heated sidewalks. The city of Holland, Mich., has had them since 1998, and Edmonton is also looking into it.

Saskatoon hasn't committed to the idea yet but is looking at different models. Some of the options include using solar panels or even energy from hot water dumped into the river from SaskPower’s Queen Elizabeth power station.

"That’s a tremendous amount of energy that’s just dumped into the water so if we could capture that somehow, maybe that's an option for an entire area like the downtown, like the city centre,” Wallace said.

The city says it’s too early to know what the costs would be to implement the technology. Conducting feasibility studies, talking to the industry, and looking at upcoming re-development projects means it could be at least five years before it starts building heated sidewalks.