CALGARY- The city’s roads department is defending its snow clearing practices, despite many vehicles still being buried under high snow drifts from last week’s blizzard.
“We still pay our taxes here, I expect to have roads I can drive on and not worry about my life every time I get behind the wheel,” complains Shaifra Di Battista, who makes her living driving around the city. “In Montreal when you have a snow storm, you have three sanders, three graders that run parallel and they push the snow while it’s falling. They get it off to the side of the road so you don’t slip and slide everywhere.”
Officials from the city say the delay in digging out communities like Skyview Ranch was due to the ‘perfect storm’: a blizzard, followed by extreme cold, then more snow that continuously forced crews back onto priority one roads.
“We have 350 thousand vehicles a day that move around the city, and obviously our concern is about the vast majority of them and that they can get around as fast and as effectively as possible.”
He adds that the snow clearing budget and policy are right, for Calgary’s weather patterns.
“I think we just saw incredibly different circumstances in the most recent past, and did we react well to it? I think we did.”
City councillor Joe Magliocca says he will make a notice of motion at Monday’s council meeting, to rethink the policy and make it easier for private contractors to help clear snow.
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