City administration to review snow removal policy

The City of Moose Jaw will be reviewing a trio of engineering and infrastructure policies in the coming months, with the winter maintenance policy – along with the road repair and water and sewer capital construction division – coming under review to seek improvements and efficiencies.

The winter maintenance review will cover all aspects of snow removal and ice control on local streets, including timelines for clearance, as well as flood mitigation measures in the spring.

Coun. Chris Warren brought forth the motion, saying feedback from the community and his own personal experiences with winter driving in Moose Jaw drove him to ask for the review.

“We should be able to embrace winter conditions rather than fear them,” Warren said. “We have it six months of every year, and it creates challenges for people all ages and ability. So we need guidelines in place to ensure the safety of the transportation network and that people can get into work safely as well as allowing our citizens to enjoy recreational activities whether there is snow on the ground or not.”

Some of the issues Warren has heard about include the amount of time it takes to clear snow, the lack of snow clearing on nights and weekends, the general lack of snow clearing on residential roads after a major snow event, snow pack which inevitably leads to rutting and challenging conditions for vehicles, lack of clarity with what the city does when it comes to snow and lack of communication on snow clearing efforts.

One of the major issues was the lack of information for the public when it comes to which roads are cleared first. No such information is available online, and Warren himself was only able to find a black-and-white scan of the road prioritization map. “One of the things in the policy is that the current guidelines aren’t accepted in the community when it comes to getting the snow off the street,” he said. “Obviously when someone can’t get down a street, particularly a primary road, it causes stress and creates negativity in the community and affects people on a day-to-day basis.”

Currently, priority one roads like Main Street and Ninth Avenue are to be cleared in 72 hours (three days). Priority two roads such as Coteau Street West and Caribou Street have a 108 hour (four-and-a-half days) window and all other streets are cleared if rutting exceeds 10 centimetres (four inches), but only if traffic is significantly hampered. Improvements to that system will be one of the things the potential new policy will look at, and in doing so with regards to all winter issues, city engineering was asked to research other municipalities dealing with similar problems.

“Some have been here and done that, some are behind us, some are ahead of us, some have well-established practices,” Warren said. “Finding out what works and what hasn’t and tailoring our approach for our municipality is the best way to go.” Coun. Dawn Luhning relayed a personal experience when it came to dealing with snowfall in the city, referring to a heavy storm on a Friday where clearing didn’t start until the following Monday. “Snow clearing and removal has been a thorn in my paw over the years because it seems like we get those one or two major storms a year and we are just crippled as a city,” she said, adding that she herself helped push a vehicle stuck on Athabasca Street in the aftermath of that snowfall.

“After one of the major storms, the mayor was on tv, apologizing that the city wouldn’t be cleared in the next 72 hours, that it would take five days instead of three, I thought ‘wow, we haven’t even started yet, and we have significantly less people [than Montreal or other larger cities that contend with these kind of storms, too],” Luhning said. “So something needs to be done and I’m willing to talk about it and try and figure out what it is we can do to make it better.” City manager Jim Puffault said city administration would look at the policy in the near future and have improvements in place before the coming winter. “We might not be able to answer everything right away, but there are some major issues that we need to address,” he said. “My office will help to try and get some polls from other communities and give us some direction for this fall and this winter and we’ll go forward as we go from there.

Puffault pointed out that while improvements may be possible, they might come at a cost that will lead to some tough decisions down the road.

“If we have to move from five-and-a-half days to two days, there are resources that are required for that... so we’ll see what standards are in other communities and come back to council with a list of options that council can choose and say ‘yeah, we’ll go with this’ while understanding there will be some costs attached to it,” he said.

“We’ll work towards that in the report and bring something back before the snow flies this year.” For breakdowns of the road repair and water and sewer capital construction division, catch the next issue of the Moose Jaw Express.