TORONTO – The private contractor responsible for clearing a portion of the QEW near Oakville will be given a “non-compliance” order after a report found the operators failed to properly clear the roads of snow following last week’s storm.
The report’s findings were released Tuesday and claim the contractor got trucks on the road an hour late, did not use enough salt, did not have enough equipment spreading salt, and deployed equipment from a yard on the east-end of the route, causing it to get stuck in traffic.
The Ontario government has not said how much, if at all, the contractor will be fined.
The Ontario government doles out contracts for road maintenance operations province-wide and monitors the actions of each contractor.
The contractors are required to do a number of things to meet the requirements of their contracts including starting salting within 30 minutes of the onset of a storm, plowing when there are two centimetres of snow on the ground and clearing pavement completely within eight hours of a storm ending.
If the contractors don’t meet the terms of the contract, the government can fine or revoke the contract from the company.
That can include an initial $5,000 fine for every vehicle that’s not plowing when there are two centimetres of snow on the ground and an additional $1,000 fine for every half-hour it takes to get the trucks plowing.
Similar fines can be levied if trucks aren’t salting within 30 minutes of a storm starting.
The Ontario government fined various companies a total of $3.2 million in 2013.
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