A SURE SIGN OF SPRING
The city’s annual spring street sweeping campaign officially kicks off Monday, but crews were already at work Thursday. The effort is expected to finish June 1.
The city has declared spring ’s arrival.
It will begin cleaning Edmonton streets Monday.
“The late spring has been one of our challenges this year,” Andrew Grant, the city ’s general supervisor of infrastructure field operations, told a news conference Thursday. “But our teams have been working hard ... and we feel the spring sweep program will be a success.”
Crews will begin cleaning hightraffic and high-volume areas first, then move into other parts of the city.
About 32 street sweepers, 60 to 70 dump trucks and more than 100 staff members will be cleaning streets 24 hours a day.
They will first sweep boulevards and push debris onto major roads, then road crews will sweep the debris from the major roads, he said. Road crews will sweep up debris on residential roads during the day.
Motorists can expect to see peace officers, flashing lights and blocked lanes on major roads.
The city used considerably less sand this year than last year because of the introduction of a liquid calcium chloride solution, a type of salt with an added corrosion inhibitor.
This year, 39,000 tonnes of sand was used on city streets, as opposed to 109,000 tonnes last year. Grant hopes this will make street cleaning easier and faster. Sand picked up from the streets will be stockpiled in the city’s facilities while the city’s sand recycling program is under review.
Even as the city sweeps away the signs of winter, motorcyclists are taking advantage of the milder temperatures and are already out on the streets.
“It is up to the citizens to drive to the conditions and realize there is some sand and grit on the roads that makes our roads safe in the winter, but can be a hazard to motorcyclists in the spring,” Grant said.
Unless there is another snow dump, which might slow things down, the city hopes to finish cleaning by June 1.
The city is asking people to move vehicles off the street to allow crews to do a thorough job. Sweeping schedules will be posted on neighbourhood signs and at edmonton.ca/streetsweeping. Schedules will be updated regularly throughout the sweeping process.
The city asks residents to note that each neighbourhood has a designated week for residential sweeping, but if crews are ahead of schedule, sweeping will start in the neighbourhood early.