MONTREAL – By around noon Friday, city officials said they had cleared just more than half of the snow that two successive winter storms dumped on the city. But some boroughs are better off than others. According to City Councillor Anie Samson, some boroughs have as much as 75 per cent of their streets cleared, where others have only about 36 per cent of their streets cleared.
Samson conceded there is some frustration from residents in the southwest part of town, but said she hoped residents would try to cooperate with about 3,000 snow removal workers as they did their work.
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“It’s long but I know that we have a lot of snow so we’re doing our best,” she said.
The second storm occurred on the weekend, snarling travel plans and clogging highways. Almost a week later, the city is still digging out, partially hampered by a provincially mandated 36-hour hiatus.
“It’s impossible to get around. A lot of streets are one-way streets that were once two-way,” said Naomi Machaly, an NDG resident. NDG seemed particularly swamped. Orange no-parking signs were everywhere along the neighbourhood’s streets, indicating that a snow removal team was about to pass through. But some residents pointed out that didn’t always happen on schedule.
“They’ve been putting signs up and taking them down and nothing would happen,” said Joey Patapas, an NDG native who was visiting his parents. “Cars are parked at angles, and since I got here on the 23rd, my street hasn’t been touched at all.”
The city has revised projections for snow removal – it now hopes to have the streets fully cleared by Monday.
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