City of Calgary preparing for possible snow in the forecast

With the possibility of snow in the forecast for Calgary, the city says its road maintenance crews are ready.

Speaking to local media on Wednesday, city officials highlighted some of the changes to Calgary’s winter road maintenance policy.

“Snow can happen anytime,” says Chris Hewitt, manager of mobility maintenance at The City of Calgary. “Our winter maintenance program continues to be about getting people around the city safely regardless of conditions and regardless of how people are choosing to move themselves around the city.”

Among the changes to the city’s snow removal bylaw are new fines for people who shovel snow from private property, like driveways, and into public spaces like roads, bike lanes or sidewalks.

Homeowners can also face fines if they fail to remove snow from public sidewalks, adjacent to their property, within 24 hours of the snowfall ending.

The fines range from $150. for a first offence to $750. for a third offence.

Repeat offenders may also face a court appearance.

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In the event of a heavy snowfall that prompts the city to introduce a snow route parking ban, motorists who fail to move their cars off of designated roads can also face a fine or have their vehicle towed.

“It’s been a few years since we’ve done that,” says Hewitt.  “A lot of situations have to be in play for us to want to call that event, a lot of snow buildup on the roads and we need minimum capacity for more snow on those roads.  If that happens and we have cold temperatures and we don’t expect any melt, that’s when we would look at calling one of our snow parking bans.”

The last time the city put a snow route parking ban in place was February 2019.

Hewitt says the city has approximately 100 snow plows, 30 graders and 30 smaller pieces of equipment available to help clear the snow and this year most of them have had blue lights installed on them to increase visibility.

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Calgary’s snow clearing budget for 2024 is about $55m.

Hewitt says there was about 160cm of snow that fell from Jan-April and it cost about $38m to remove.

That means there’s about $17m left in the city’s snow budget from now until the end of December.

For more information on the city’s winter maintenance operations and updates, residents are invited to visit calgary.ca/snow.

1:36 New transit snow route gets cold response northwest Calgary community