We – Edmonton City Council – need to change the city’s Winter Road Maintenance Policy.
City staff are for the most part achieving the 48 hour response target on main roads and bus routes, and they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do under the policy for residential side streets, which is to maintain a snow pack at 10 cm or less by ‘blading’ or smoothing with the sanding truck-plows.
I am receiving mixed feedback as to whether this is working for citizens, but what is clear is that there are many residential streets where the blading practice is not working. This is a pdf of a brief circulated to members of council from City staff indicating that they intend to change their practice to blade more frequently and more preemptively.
I’m not convinced that this is enough.
Precisely because there are too many variables (weight of the truck, skill of the operator, micro-climates in different parts of the city, traffic volumes, width of the street, presence of driveways) I do not think the 10 cm snow pack standard will suffice on a city-wide basis. I believe the many citizens who’ve contacted me are correct that blading when this 10 cm pack is loose is not an effective use of public dollars.
Winnipeg has been frequently cited this week as an example of a city where snow is handled well on side streets. We learned at the Transportation Committee presentation on Tuesday that their policy is also to maintain a snow pack, but their threshold is 5 cm which can’t break up as easily.
They do not remove snow from side streets, they generally pile it to one side of the street and ban parking there. They clear driveways if the windrows are higher that 8”. A handy FAQ on Winnipeg’s practices can be found here and their overall policy is here.
I think we should look seriously at lowering the snow pack from the current 10 cm to 5 cm if nothing else.
This approach has some advantages compared to going to bare pavement (which can then require more sanding if the pavement begins to ice up). When this pack does breaks up in warmer spells or in the spring the accumulations are insufficient to cause that ‘oatmeal’ effect which is so confounding to motorists and pedestrians.
I think plowing to bare pavement and removal of the windrows from all streets should be a last resort, and I’m not sure it would be a prudent use of public dollars outside of an extreme snowfall.
The city is doing a survey in February of citizens’ experiences and expectations, which will likely confirm what Councillors are hearing from citizens and reading in the papers.
I think Council needs to have the policy debate first, being mindful of the costs, and then talk about how we might pay for it. A tax increase should be the last resort, and I agree that threatening the public with that is not helping. I haven’t been doing that.
As chair of the Transportation and Public Works committee I will be personally following up on this in April when a report comes to us outlining alternatives to the current policy.
In the mean time I am applying pressure to city administration to consider a proper grader pass in the areas where the oatmeal is worst.
