CALGARY – Officials say city streets are covered in more gravel than usual, and it will take longer to clean it up – thanks to budget cuts.
A cold winter with record snowfall forced the city’s transportation department to use more than double the amount of gravel it normally does, to help drivers gain traction on icy roads.
Despite this, the City of Calgary decreased its spring cleaning budget for 2014 by 10 per cent.
City council asked all departments to cut costs, prompting the roads department to slash roughly $700,000 from its street cleaning budget.
“The reason why we selected spring cleanup as one of the programs to be cut was because of citizen safety,” says Carissa Vescio, City of Calgary Transportation Department. “The spring cleanup program is a really nice thing to have, but it doesn’t necessarily impact the safety of Calgarians like a program such as pothole repairs would.”
The changes are of concern to cyclists who find travel along gravel and dirt-covered roads to be dangerous.
However, the transportation department says it will still clean higher priority routes first, which will clear the road for many bike users.
“On-street marked bike routes will be the first to get paved,” adds Vescio. “Followed by the priority one and two routes, and then of course other bike lanes as well.”
The cuts mean most streets will be cleaned only once, and the entire process will take longer than usual.
Crews are usually done cleaning streets by the time Stampede begins, but because staff members won’t be out on weekends the cleaning will now extend past mid-July.
The city will also stop towing cars left parked in cleaning zones despite signage warning drivers to move their vehicles.
Street cleaning is slated to start at the end of April.
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