Street clearing changes provide quicker snow removal action

The City of Swift Current has changed the way they are attacking snowy city streets this winter, resulting in a dramatic cut in time to clear priority travel routes throughout Swift Current.

City of Swift Current CAO Susan Motkaluk said the improvement in snow removal efforts by Public Works were part of a service level review which is being conducted in all city departments.

“What we have done is we’ve actually improved our turn around time,” Motkaluk said of Swift Current’s snow removal strategy at City Council’s Jan. 6 meeting. “So I think when I first started I believe we were at about a 21 day turn around to go through our whole I don’t know how many kilometres of roads. But we’ve now worked that back steadily over the last few years and now I think we’ve got it down to about 10 days, or something like that, where we get through all our priority ones.”

“With snow removal we’ve embarked on quite a journey to see how we could improve our processes, but still use the same resources that we have over the last few years.”

Motkaluk

said

the community can expect to see improvements in other city services on an ongoing basis.

“What we’re working on overall, and this is for the whole city, we’ve been conducting for the last two to three years very comprehensive servicelevel reviews. And we’ve been looking at our programs and we’ve been looking at how effective a lot of the programs have been,” she said.

“And so the great news about that of course is the community is experiencing better service for the same cost. And we hope to do that with many of our services. We’re working on it, so you’ll see improvements in other areas too.”