St. Albert’s department of public works has managed to stay within city snow clearing standards despite the large dumps of snow over the weekend and on Monday night.
“So far it’s going well. I mean, we did receive quite a bit of snow, over 30 centimetres since the weekend … we’re well within policy in terms of highways and arterials,” said Dan Rites, the city’s director of public works.
Rites said early Tuesday afternoon that the priority one areas – St. Albert Trail and Ray Gibbon Drive – had already been cleared and priority two roads, which are arterials, would be completed soon, with the next plow shift to focus on priority three areas – collectors and commercial roads.
“Highways are done and arterials are going to be completed here by the next shift and collectors should be done overnight,” Rites said.
City policy is to have priority one roads plowed and sanded within eight hours after a snow event, if accumulation is between two to five centimetres or more. Priority two roads, arterials, are to be done within 12 hours, while collector and commercial roads are to be done within 24 hours.
When snow comes over a weekend it’s easier to get out and start clearing because there’s less traffic, Rites said.
“That allows us to get ahead of the game,” he said of the weekend’s snowfall. “We also knew it was coming … as such we were able to do a lot of prep work leading into that weekend.”
All of the city’s six trucks that are equipped with plows are out during all the shifts, as well as other equipment, Rites said. The department has a team set up to tackle hot spots as well.
“Complaints have been minimal,” he said.
Rites urged drivers to be patient if there is snow-clearing equipment nearby and to give the equipment a lot of room.
Patience was also needed for transit riders on Monday night.
“It was a difficult day yesterday, well particularly the afternoon,” said Bob McDonald, director of St. Albert Transit. “We were running at the end maybe somewhere between half-an-hour and an hour late on most buses.”
Buses were getting caught up in Edmonton traffic, McDonald said. Tuesday morning was going better because the buses start out in St. Albert.
Being caught in traffic snarls makes it hard to avoid delays, McDonald said.
“We were able to run all our buses. We didn’t have any buses stuck,” he said. “We didn’t have any roads we couldn’t run on because it was too slippy or something like that. We did have to make some detours around collisions in Edmonton.”
