Anyone who thinks those stairs are OK, or even 1 percent of OK, or that "it's just a set of stairs" is kidding themselves.
Laughable.
I can see just looking at the photo that what is there is a joke. While I admire the old boy's ambition, the fact of the matter is what he has built is so substandard, even dangerous, it's not fucking funny. All it will take is some chubby soccer mom walking down there with a couple of kids for the stairs to collapse and then the lawsuits will start flying.
So tell me Ardie, you're the lawyer here. Say chubby soccer mom and her kiddies go for a tumble and little junior breaks his neck. Who do they sue? The old boy doesn't have insurance to be doing this sort of thing. The City didn't design or build them. So who is at fault?
If I was the City, I'd send a City crew over there tonight and tear those stairs out and add it to the old boy's property tax bill to deter his stupidity in the future.
Everyone thinks, "it's just a set of stairs". Uh huh. About as smart as operating on yourself by following the manual.
I think the cost will be a lot closer to the City's estimate than most of you could ever fathom. The slope needs to be surveyed, you may need to consider drainage, geotechnical issues, do you need lights?, you need an engineer's signed and sealed design, you need a slew of permits from the various departments at the City of Toronto, the thing has to go out to public tender, maybe somebody feels the need to have a public meeting about the stairs, and then it has to be built properly and inspected during construction. And let's not forget that any construction done for the City of Toronto has to be done by unionized contractors. So right there, you're at about $80.00 per hour per man base rate.
If you think you can do all that for $500.00 or $1,500.00 or even $50,000.00, I've got a bridge for sale over the Don Valley I'd like you to look at.