Who has the white stuff?
We look at the snow-clearing policies of six Canadian cities to see how they measure up
By: Mia Rabson
OTTAWA -- It's early January in the nation's capital and the city is digging out from just the second storm of the year.
On Saturday, Jan. 3, Ottawa had to deal with an 18-centimetre dump of snow, followed the next day by 11 millimetres of rain and freezing rain. But by Sunday night, just over 24 hours after the storm began, most streets were clear, residential sidewalks had been plowed and cars and people were moving around the city without much trouble.
Sean Kilpatrick/ THE CANADIAN PRESS (CP)
More than 2,000 kilometres away in Winnipeg, things weren't so rosy. After 16 cm of snow fell on Jan. 1 and 2, new Mayor Brian Bowman was steamed about the quality of snow clearing.
He said he's looking at whether more of the work should be given to city crews rather than private contractors and investigating whether private contractors are meeting their required service standards.
He told reporters Wednesday more sand should have been put down and more effort made to remove ruts.
Slippery streets and the buildup of ruts last winter led to a huge outcry from Winnipeg drivers and contributed to an increase in accidents that compelled Manitoba Public Insurance to ask for a rate increase to cover the added claims.
Snow clearing and winter street maintenance are major headaches in almost every city east of British Columbia. Unpredictable weather and high expectations of residents mean even in small snowstorms, the phones ring off the hook with complaints.
"It's a very visible public service that really impacts everyone," said Darrin Natolino, superintendent of winter works for the Halifax Regional Municipality.
If you want the gold standard of snow clearing, one must look to Quebec, where Montreal spent more on snow clearing last year than Winnipeg has in the last five years.
With a budget of $155 million this year, the city will deploy 370 road and sidewalk salting trucks, and 1,000 snowplows, graders, front-end loaders and sidewalk plows, to clear more than 10,000 km of roads and sidewalks of snow and ice. As soon as 2.5 cm of snow is on the ground, the city goes into clearing mode and doesn't stop until the city is clear, usually within five days unless it's a major storm.
Montreal also removes most of the snowbanks, spending as much as 70 per cent of its snow-clearing budget on snow removal.
In 2013-14, Montreal spent nearly $840,000 for every centimetre of snow that fell.
Snowfall is so unpredictable, all cities find it hard to budget. In November and December 2013, Halifax had to clear away 83 cm of snow. A year later, only seven cm fell in those months. Last year, Winnipeg blew its yearly snow-clearing budget by the end of March. Ottawa and Toronto were well over budget before the end of February.
All cities classify streets as different priority levels; most clear expressways and main arteries to the pavement but leave a little snowpack on residential streets. But that is about where the similarities end.
Each city has different methods of clearing. Some, like Winnipeg, use mostly private contractors. Others split the work between the two, while cities such as Edmonton use almost exclusively city crews to do the work.
Toronto and Ottawa use monitoring stations around the city to keep track of surface temperatures and dew points, helping predict when ice is forming and keeping notes on when precipitation begins. It helps those cities deploy crews as soon as possible.
Most clear sidewalks, although Halifax just started doing that, Toronto doesn't do it on residential streets downtown and Edmonton doesn't do it on residential streets at all. Toronto and Winnipeg will clear part of the windrows left in front of residential driveways but the rest generally leave that to residents. Edmonton recycles most of the sand it uses.
Before a storm ever begins, crews in Ottawa and Montreal hit the ground with salters and de-icers, laying down a brine liquid to pre-treat roads and prevent snow from adhering to the pavement, which makes it much easier to clear. Ottawa then sends out its plows to the main roads as soon as the snow starts to fall, while most other cities wait for at least two or three centimetres to accumulate.
"We get out there as soon as we can to prevent that bond (to the pavement)," said Luc Gagné, manager of road services in Ottawa.
Cities such as Winnipeg and Edmonton are at a disadvantage here because it's usually too cold for salt or pre-treat brine liquid to work.
Ottawa also aims to have main roads cleared within four hours of the end of a storm, and residential streets are to be done within 10 hours. Winnipeg and Edmonton aim to clear the main roads within 36 hours and residential roads not for five days.
It's hard to compare costs directly, because different climates, different amounts of snowfall, and different city sizes all affect what is done.
And standards generally go out the window when a major storm hits, because even the cities with budgets like Montreal's can't keep up.
On Jan. 5, people returned to work and school in that city following a weekend storm that delivered 20 cm of snow and 30 mm of rain that left the ground so icy some people strapped on skates instead of boots to traverse the sidewalks.
Toronto knows this problem all too well.
Trevor Tenn, acting director of transportation services in Toronto, says as soon as someone outside the city starts asking about snow clearing, he knows 1999 is going to come up. More than 118 cm of snow fell on the city in just two weeks, prompting mayor Mel Lastman to call in the army to help dig out the country's largest metropolis.
"We'll never live that one down," said Tenn.
Here's the breakdown:
Amount of snowfall required before crews hit freeways, main arteries with plows
Ottawa: as soon as snowfall begins
Montreal: 2.5 cm
Halifax: 2 cm Toronto: 2 cm for expressways, 5 cm for major and minor arterials and collector streets
Edmonton: 3 cm
Winnipeg: 3 cm
Time expected to clear freeways and main arteries from the end of a storm
Ottawa: 2-4 hours
Toronto: 2-3 hours for expressways, 6-14 hours for other main roads.
Halifax: 12 hours
Montreal: less than five days if less than 20 cm, greater than five days if more than 30 cm (this applies to the entire city not just the main streets)
Edmonton: 36 hours
Winnipeg: 36 hours
Snowfall amount required before residential streets are cleared
Montreal: 2.5 cm
Ottawa: 7 cm
Toronto: 8 cm
Edmonton: 10 cm (clearing doesn't begin until after main streets are cleared)
Winnipeg: 10 cm (clearing doesn't begin until after main streets are cleared)
Halifax: 10 cm
Time expected to clear residential roads of snow
Ottawa: 10 hours
Toronto: 14-16 hours
Halifax: 36 hours
Montreal: within five days (Unless more than 30 cm of snow falls, then it can be longer)
Winnipeg: five days
Edmonton: five days
Kilometres of roads to plow
Toronto: 5,600 km
Ottawa: 5,700 km
Montreal: 5,600 km
Edmonton: 4,700 km
Winnipeg: 4,400 km
Halifax: 3,800 km
Amount of salt, sand, pre-treat liquid used
Ottawa: 180,000 tonnes salt, 4.5 million litres of pretreat liquid
Montreal: 140,000 tonnes salt
Toronto: 130,000 tonnes salt, 2.3 million litres of pretreat liquid
Winnipeg: 70,000 tonnes sand, 20,000 tonnes salt
Edmonton: 18,800 tonnes salt, 97,691 tonnes of street sand, 34,354 tonnes of rock chips, 143,981 litres of pretreat liquid
Halifax: n/a
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 10, 2015 A6