City waited too long to clear the roads

It appears that it only takes more than 30 days without snow for the City of Edmonton to forget how, and more importantly, when to clear snow from our streets.

Thursday night the snow started falling around 6 p.m., near the end of rush hour.

Considering that the weather bureaus have been forecasting this snow for several days, it was my assumption that snow-clearing equipment would be ready and able to tackle this storm.

Considering the city basically had the roads to themselves for almost 12 hours until the next rush hour, it was also assumed that major arteries would have at least seen some clearing on arterial roads.

Having to attend an appointment at 8 a.m., after cleaning my driveway and sidewalks for the second time, I left around 7:15 only to find that Riverbend Road, 23 Avenue and 34 Avenue had not seen one bit of snow clearing, sanding or even a little bit of shovelling over the past 12 hours despite over 15 centimetres of snow falling.

I guess I made one more wrong assumption, that these were arterial roads.

I have been retired for a number of years and have forgotten that making assumptions is a fool’s game.

Now I remember that snow clearing in Edmonton doesn’t start until after the snow stops falling.

I’m certainly relieved I that I don’t have to make these assumptions every day like thousands of working Edmontonians.

Ed Posyniak, Edmonton