Winter Roads Paradigm Shift Needed
This was near where the fire truck infamously became stuck last Sunday. I was there the day before based on the volume of concerns, and after seeing this and other trouble spots across the ward I asked (along with several other councillors it turns out) for the City Manager to call in the graders. It was still nearly a week before this crescent was cleared out.
Let me start with an apology for the snow service Edmonton residents have received this winter. Our response to the conditions was not good enough and I am sorry for the disruption.
I must also express gratitude for the efforts of our staff and contractors who have generally done their best under the circumstances, and thanks to all the neighbourly Edmontonians who helped each other get through the last month.
Council is ultimately responsible for the resources and policy direction and we are accountable to get this right. Our planned approach might have served in an average winter, but our policy and resources are clearly insufficient for exceptional winters, and we must plan for more severe weather with a changing climate.
A review of the snow policy has already begun. After several hours of discussion at Council we directed City staff to prepare and analyze several options for more timely winter roadway service. We discussed how other cities respond to extraordinary weather and this too will inform our follow up.
We are already looking at buying more equipment. To start with, we’re looking at another 20 sander-plow trucks for next winter, on top of the 111 we have today, to improve our response time to all snow events.
We also discussed that we need an entirely different response to exceptional weather like we’ve experienced this month.
But we’ll need your input.
Many have suggested some version of an overnight on-street parking ban during major snowfalls, which would help our existing resources reach further and faster by not having to work around parked vehicles – a kind of return to the snow routes.
Others have concerns about windrows on side streets, and I think this needs further discussion. For instance, if we could get plows into neighbourhoods sooner after moderate snowfalls while it’s still soft it would keep the plows moving quicker, and the smaller softer windrows would be more easily removed by residents who desired to maintain on-street parking.
Clearly, whatever we come up with, we need a paradigm shift.
I will post more information as our work to fix this unfolds here and I encourage you to leave your comments below.
If you would like to receive email notification of developments on this topic or provide input, feel free to send an e-mail to don.iveson at edmonton.ca
22 thoughts on “Winter Roads Paradigm Shift Needed”
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I’m glad to see council taking this seriously. Planning for unusual weather is definitely going to be one of the city’s biggest future challenges.
I would definitely support an on-street parking ban. When I saw that our neighbourhood was scheduled for cleaning I made sure to talk to my neighbour about moving his vehicles from in front of his house, which he immediately did – only to have someone else promptly park there. So now he has a large slab of packed-down snow in front of his house, through no fault of his own. And when it starts to melt, the giant puddle will be in front of my house.
The city doesn’t owe its citizens free on-street parking.
To be honest, I’m not sure that dedicating more resources to snow removal is a valuable use of tax money. A city shouldn’t be expected to be prepared for a 20-year storm – that’s not an efficient allocation of resources – and I’m frankly annoyed that no one in the administration or political leadership has come out and said that.
Like the “lower taxes” mantra, “better snow removal” is one of those things that’ll never, ever be good enough to quell the complainers. A few years ago, it was policy that residential streets were never cleared to pavement, and only very rarely bladed (I think it worked out to about once each winter). People complained about that, too, so service was added. A few years later and that policy is a distant memory, and the level of expectations has been raised…now the new, higher, level of service is unacceptable. No matter what level of service you offer, in extreme conditions the level is going to go down.
(On a side note, my back alley has been bladed at least 3, possibly 4 times, since the big snowfall. This was certainly beyond my expectations, and likely a fairly wasteful use of resources.)
So we repeat the cycle. And no matter what you do, what new direction you set, the next time there’s a big snow storm, you will be criticized for not doing enough. And so we will once again increase the public subsidy of private automobiles.
With all respect, Don, the city has a poor record when it comes to snow clearing. This past month just exposed it for how bad it really is.
I think another question you need to tackle is whether the city’s policy is snow clearing or snow removal. And if the answer is snow clearing, then the city must do a better job with windrows. In far too many areas, they’ve become traffic hazards, blocking views, reducing the number of lanes on roads unexpectedly. I have to scale a three-foot high windrow to cross the street on the way home from my bus stop – a precarious task when it iced over the other day.
@Neil, note that I said bus stop. I take the bus and LRT to work daily. The city took more than two weeks to clear the bus routes in my neighbourhood. My bus got stuck on more than one occasion. And when fire trucks and ambulances get stuck, it’s a bigger issue than “the public subsidy of private automobiles.”
Updates to the snow removal list on the City’s website are incorrect – our community (McKernan – yes, not in your ward, but…) shows ‘completed’, and yet there are streets being plowed as I write, and streets that haven’t even been touched! So… perhaps honesty should be first, then transparency… then some real action like other major cities in Canada already have!
Ed
I saw the link to this on twitter and I really appreciate your leadership on this issue. I do believe we are going to see more snowfall like this with the climate change and Edmonton can really use more contingency planning in this area. Maybe the community leagues could be more involved in planning and educating their residents on how street parking impacts this issue. Maybe each community could draw up alternative plans about where people can park those extra vehicles in a situation like this. Thanks for everything you do.
This is a great post, thank you!
The city has completely failed the users of roadways this month. The response to the snowfall has been too slow and too ineffective for a winter city. We’re quickly approaching one month since the last major dump of snow.
It would seem that regular and on-going roadway maintenance would go a long way towards improving conditions. Even though the grading operation had already started, the deterioration of the snow pack on my street could have been managed by still having a sander-plow come through during the recent warm spell to scrape down to a smaller snow pack. Perhaps if that had happened I wouldn’t have to detour around my street by driving through condo and apartment parking lots. It seems that the conditions of streets were not a consideration in the grading schedule, rather the schedule was made based on proximity to maintenance yards?
I would love to see the city enforce snow route parking bans to at least keep the main roads and bus routes in better shape. I was shocked at how many days it took for the city to even touch a main neighbourhood route and bus route (Riverbend Road) after the large snowfall. Bus drivers could hardly navigate sections of the road for days.
I don’t know if the city needs to necessarily devote more money to snow removal on an ongoing basis, but perhaps a look at what service the city and citizens are getting for that money would go a long way towards improving conditions. I hope that at the very least the city will be quicker to respond to an exceptional snowfall like we saw in January rather than waiting for things to reach a critical breaking point.
Unlike Neil, my neighbourhood awaits clearing still. We were plowed in December, so all of the accumulation is still on the streets and alleyways, and cars are still dragging bottom, causing undercarriage damage still. Neil’s point about “better snow removal” is well taken, but ADEQUATE snow removal should be an achievable goal. Fire trucks, tow trucks, buses, and sanders getting stuck on residential streets are unacceptable, obviously. Thank you for your apology, and I look forward to better service.
I’m more concerned about the major roads like the James Mac or Parsons road that suddenly lose one lane because a windrow has melted or fallen over. When you’re going 60 and a two car lane is forced into one for a short duration, it can get pretty dangeous at times. As for residential roads, it doesn’t become a safety concern.
Another safety concern is just when a windrow creates blind spots for merging traffic. And that’s already been cleared out at many intersections.
We live in Edmonton and it shouldn’t be a surprise to get stuck sometimes. I’m not too concerned about the residential neighbourhood too much as it’s been the same way for the last 20 years. The city crew always does a great job clearing the residential roads when they get around to it. In fact, I’ve never seen my residential road done so well… ever.
I think we’re doing a great job compared to most cities, and with the resources we have. One out-of-season snowfall shouldn’t affect everything we do, and I think Edmontonians just need to understand that it isn’t always effective to place all our resources for the once in 20 year snowfall. Keep up the great work in the pyramid!
I grew up in Edmonton. We had HUGE snowfalls back in the day, same as this winter of 2011. The graders would come out that night it was snowing & clear off all the snow. The next day, trucks would come & take all the snow. Granted, Edmonton had less people then.
Granted, Edmonton has MORE people now.
Seems pretty simple to me: either rent or buy more graders!!
Otherwise, why are we bothering to pay for taxes, when even FIRETRUCKS can’t get through??
Ridiculous!
Just some random thoughts:
1) some sort of parking ban is needed to facilitate snow removal (whether on bus routes or even just residential streets) – without some sort of ban and enforcement (eg. even just towing cars around the corner like what used to happen when I first moved to Edmonton in the mid-1980’s), there end up being lots of inequities. One of our neighbours didn’t move his truck, all he had to do was dig away a not-particularly-large windrow and he had his parking space maintained – another neighbour did move their vehicle and their prized spot became the prime dumping ground for all the snow on our street, pretty much irretrievable without a bobcat.
2) I understand that with lots of snow and limited resources, the windrows might not be cleared away immediately even on major streets – but why aren’t they even in straight lines often? When you have two lanes and suddenly one is blocked by a windrow for a few blocks and then there are two lanes again (or that a free-flow right-turning lane is no longer free-flow because there’s a mound of snow in the way), it just appears to be result of laziness or carelessness that should have been avoidable.
3) the idea of blading down to a certain level of snowpack just seems pointless for the most part, because last winter and this winter (ie in December just before the big snowfall then), our street was “bladed” and it appeared the blade was set so high that the net effect was nothing. Which is then a real waste of money and resources, gives the appearance of “oh, well people want something to be done, so we’ll send these trucks out to do something even though really they’re not accomplishing anything”.
I find the City’s plan is very reactive, not pro-active and a huge storm exposes all the weaknesses of that plan. A good plan is flexible enough to handle one in 20 year storms rather than bringing a city to it’s knees. I don’t think the problem is entirely financial, although the transportation manager was quoted as saying even it if was an average year, his crew would be barely keeping up. As much of the blame lays in poor use of money and resources. If the city had just sent in the graders immediately, what would the cost have been compared to what it is costing us now on the 3rd attempt? It is embarrassing that every residential street is only wide enough (or will be once plowed) for one vehicle.
Some suggestions:
1) Despite what people say, I think people are willing to pay a surcharge for better snow removal if they can see the results like St Albert or Sherwood Park. I think the city would benefit by having a specific snow removal fund that a surchage would feed into (in addition to a set budget). It would be illegal for any council to use this money for any other purpose. Unused money would rollover from year to year so easy years would offset bad ones.
2) Residential streets should be plowed down to the pavement when total snowfall or snow pack reaches X amount. If x amount is reached in one shot, residential streets are plowed immediately. As you mentioned in your blog, the result is residents have piles of snow to deal with, not blocks of ice. Said piles of snow are also more likely to melt during warm spells. As well, by keeping the snow pack under control, big storms don’t have a chance to do this kind of damage.
3) Some other municipalities push all snow to one side of the street leaving the other side for limited parking. Some parking is better than none. It is unacceptable for a city of 750K people to have zero residential street parking for the next 3 months.
4) Blading does not work in Edmonton. Our climate is predictable in that it is unpredictable. In recent years, the wild swings in temperature are commonplace – we will hit well above zero temperatures on a regular basis in winter and huge ruts will form. Moving snow around (which is all blading does) does not address this.
5) Why were retainers dropped for contract graders? Grader companies take the sure money – parking lot contracts. It should have been our streets that were prestine the day after not our grocery store parking lots.
6) All lanes on major roadways must be completely cleared. We spend how much money on improving infrastructure just to have all the benefits taken away for 6 months of the year.
7) A heavily enforced parking ban for snow clearing is a must.
The plus side to all of this is that I think council is finally serious about addressing the shortcomings of our snow plan. Thank you seeking our opinions. Let’s make sure good comes out of this.
Thanks for the post Don. Having lived in Ottawa for a few years, I was very impressed at their snow clearing. After living in Edmonton I have to say I was stunned with their efficiency. It is hard to express how much better it was than Edmonton in that regard.
I think that it is more than buying new equipment. I believe that Ottawa has a very different approach. I would suggest that we examine what they do and learn from it. I think they may use a much larger fleet of private contractors who use smaller equipment who self deploy within neighbourhoods with every snowfall. I could be wrong on the details of their approach, but I really would recommend sending someone out there to study their approach or asking Ottawa to provide Edmonton with a summary of how they do it.
Hi Don, I don’t think council should apologize for the weather! The last few weeks were highly unusual, and I think the city’s response was amazing in that major roads were very quickly cleared (often the same day). For the most part traffic was kept moving well on the arterials (I unfortunately commute from the southwest to St. Albert, which by the way is NOT the snow removal utopia that some people seem to think it is). Compounding the snow of course was the extreme fluctuations in temperature over the past few weeks, and the unbelievably bad timing of one snowfall after another after another. I know that streets such as 109 street had the snow plowed and collected up to 3 times in as many weeks! This is a really good response! Crews did a great job to get the snow collected as quickly as they did. What should we plan for? Having every single road clean to bare pavement with no windrows 24 hours after a 5-year snow event? 20-year? 100-year? Should the city buy 1000 graders, 100 giant snowblowers, 500 dump trucks, and have operators just standing around for 6 months of the year?
When in the city’s history have we ever completely cleared every residential roadway down to bare pavement? No other city does this. I think this year we are creating an unreasonable precident, especially given that our total roadway length vs. residents will unfortunately, probably only continue to increase. Even if the city wanted to spend say $500 million a year on snow removal, you will never please everyone, so I don’t envy your position on this. Personally I think any increase in spending on this is a waste, because I have been getting around just fine for the last 6 weeks.
Couple points for the people who are upset:
1) Edmonton is unique. Snow falls in November and sticks around until April (June this year?) None of the other prairie cities even collect their windrows.. Calgary rarely has any snow accumulation due to chinooks. Eastern cities like Toronto just dump salt on top of it and wait for it to melt… (or just “proactively” shut everything down including schools when there are more than a couple inches in the forecast). Edmonton has not been “brought to its knees”. Not even close.
2) Winter tires help a lot, and a shovel and a pair of snow boots can come in handy. At this time of year I don’t mind planning for the fact that it will take a bit longer to get to my destination, and it might be tricky to find parking when I get there.
3) There are other methods of transportation other than the personal vehicle.
4) Snowplow retainers were cancelled by council after careful consideration and the support of the city auditor, 2 years ago. Does it make sense to pay for equipment that might not get used all winter? Tough question, and you really can’t win either way. The report is here, as well as some insightful comparisons to other cities: http://www.edmonton.ca/transportation/09273_Snow_and_Ice_Control_Cost_Effectiveness.pdf
5) Ultimately if people want more snow removal equipment, it will cost more and they will have to decide what they are willing to sacrifice to pay for it. We already pay the most per capita of all the other prairie cities, and I would strongly suspect out of every other city in Canada.
Not that I feel strongly or anything..
With changes to global warning (maybe) contributing to more frequent ’20-year storms’ I believe as a winter city Edmonton must be prepared. Buying new equipment is a correct decision, and not a waste of money. As for on street parking I certainly agree with a ban on parking while streets are being plowed provided residents know well in advance when it will be plowed. Most residents are cooperative but getting information is important. Alleyways are the key to off street parking, as are centralized parking lots to temporarily accommodate parking overnight (temperature permitting). My alley was plowed only twice this winter and the alley was a challenge on a few occasions. With garages off alleys, plowing these roads are critical to off street parking. Another idea would be some kind of incentive or tax break or reimbursement to residents who take matters in hand and use business equipment to assist neighbors in removing or relocating windrows, and plowing driveways. I am throwing another idea out there regarding snow blowers. Is there anyway that the City could fund snow blowers for neighborhoods, having them located at Community halls or firehalls for community leaques to use on the worst case streets? I think a full cooperative approach involving Edmontonians would be feasible in responding to the ’20 year storm scenario’. Ideas to consider.
Hi Don,
My Comments :
Edmonton is the Capital City of Alberta . Edmonton should be the Beacon of Light setting a High Standard of Excellence for the citizens of Edmonton and for rest of the province to be proud of .
We have a beautiful River Valley and a natural sprinkling of nature throughout our city . I applaud Mayor Mendel and Council for realizing that and initiating a plan for further development of this city treasure .
However, our Capital is in a bloody disgraceful mess , at present !
It is an embarrassing and unacceptable state .
This City is dangerous to drive in and I for one am not satisfied with : ” I’m sorry !”
There are a multitude of reasons for the despicable performance in snow removal and I conclude with these closing remarks :
Trouble shoot where you all went wrong ; Use your Common Sense and get your Sorry A____S in motion and lead this Capital City to a High Standard of Excellence in both … Summer and Winter !
Allan
.
Don’t buy more snowplough/sanders.
Other cities are smarter, they use garbage trucks with front mounted ploughs. Cities like Boston, New York, Chicago, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Washington DC and Philidelphia have ploughs includng 1-tons, 5 ton and full size trucks. City of Edmonton garbage trucks are only used 12 hours a day and only on week days, 65% of the time they are not used and they have to send seperate ploughs out to make a path down alleys rather than garbage trucks doing their own. A snowplough/ sander is only useful during winter months when there is snow, garbage trucks are useful all year and we can use them more as ploughs.
Just type in ( snow plow garbage truck ) on google images to see what I mean.
Secondly, the snow route ban ploicy should be used rather than creating another bylaw. Council can call a snow route ban on all major roads and bus routes, the signage is up but someone forgot how to put it into force. Police can be used more effectively for proactive removal of vehicles parked for more than 72 hours, before a storm hits. Spokane does this in the Fall and keep it up all winter long to make ploughing easier. I have talked with retired police officers in Edmonton and they remember when they would be ordered to crack down on street parking and hundreds of cars would be towed and impounded, they would actually have to rent an extra 5 acre yard to store them all.
After coming from Winnipeg, I agree that we need more equipement as our city is growing. Also it would be a greater benefit to make BETTER use of what we have. I have noticed things like Sanding trucks driving ahead of snow plows. What is left behind is nicely polished ICE…… Also during the storm I noticed a large grader (At first I thought is was stuck) then I noticed that he must have spend a good 15 minutes trying to line up to plow the small area infront of a bus stop. Couldn’t the smaller plows follow behind and do that job- leaving the BIG JOB to the BIG GUY….Alot of area could have been cover as on the this avenue there are 6 bus stops.
I am not a resident of your ward, Don, but I have more faith in YOUR ability to proactively address issues than I do in MY ward Councillor.
One of the things that has always baffled me is why the City of Edmonton waits until the snow stops falling to start clearing it. Someone above mentioned Ottawa; I lived there in the early 70’s, and the practice there (and then) was to get the plows and power brushes out on the main arterials WHILE the snow was falling, so that there wouldn’t be a huge accumulation to deal with.
The advantage of this is that snow isn’t as compressed into ice by subsequent traffic, and it’s a lot easier on the equipment if you’re using it to move 1 or 2 cm of loose snow rather than 6 or more cm of packed snow and ice. At least the main arterials are kept drivable, and then the residential roads can be addressed sooner.
Yes, it’s likely that running the equipment sooner will cost a bit more, but savings should be realized through lower equipment maintenance costs, as well as fewer accidents on cleaner roads.
There are a couple interesting and intelligent comments. I would echo the following:
– We live in a winter climate and personally do not expect roads to always be in good to great condition.
– Emergency vehicles and public transport access should be maintained at minimum.
– I would not want to pay more taxes in order to have assets sitting around depreciating so we can have good to great road conditions when the infrequent storms take place. There are more non-storm periods than storm periods and maybe slowing down for a day or two / three is a good thing.
– Having a set of snow tires and a well maintained vehicle is a huge asset. Personally I have had little problem getting around this year.
– Using this year as a yard marker, I would be comfortable with at least maintaining what took place in 2010-11.
– This is another cost of urban sprawl and is a separate much more important, in my opinion, issue.
For those people lucky enough to have a home or house of their own I hope they go homeless complaining about parking bans and shoveling.ihave no parking at my apartment no lazy old man to help me out shoveling I had to fight for a parking spot had to hog it for days when I left to go out there is always one trying to steal my spot.one night I was having to start clearing snow off my car with a mop.went back to borrow landlords shovel and this let’s be polite and call him jefk pulled up behind me to steal my spot.he watched my for about a half an hour on his cell phone in big truck.roads not plowed .ice beneath and ruts.my Honda drags on snow.ambulances firetruck nobody can get through and it’s not acceptable.I can get an apartment unless I have good credit card history.references and would be chosen among other couples etc.if everybody took this situation as serious as they should they should ban all shopping and support of this what you call disgustingly dangerous place to live
Last year my car was vandalized because of parking dispute.and snow not cleared. It was vandalized beyond repair.
Foget the oatmeal blade down to bare pavement, we don’t need ice .