EDMONTON – Plans to ban parking on Edmonton collector roads and continue leaving snow on residential streets next winter got a frosty reception Tuesday from city councillors.
“We’re still looking at a five-centimetre snowpack … You have issues with rutting, you have issues with melting, you have issues with ice,” Coun. Karen Leibovici told council’s transportation and infrastructure committee.
“In order to get citizen satisfaction up from 37 per cent, we need to do something drastically different than we have in the past.”
However, roadway maintenance director Bob Dunford said the five-centimetre goal implemented last winter is actually a drop from the 10-centimetre target in previous years.
When roads are cleared to bare pavement, as Leibovici suggested, there are either higher windrows or much higher costs to haul away the extra snow to an environmentally approved dump, he said.
Officials want changes to snow clearing policies in light of last winter’s repeated storms, which left many residential roads nearly impassable.
A review by staff in Calgary, Winnipeg and Grande Prairie generally supported Edmonton’s approach to cleaning streets, but recommended such moves as seasonal parking bans, better road design and improved communications.
Signs have already gone up in some neighbourhoods indicating parking won’t be allowed from Nov. 15 to March 15 along collector roads, which are used by buses.
But Coun. Bryan Anderson said it could be a waste of $600,000 if councillors don’t want to go ahead with the move, seen as a way to ensure transit vehicles can get through as windrows pile up.
“If we’re worried about optics, we’re going to spend a whole lot of money putting up signs and taking down signs. Citizens are going to hang us.”
Anderson is also concerned people who park their vehicles in garages behind their lots instead of beside the curb might be trapped for days in a big storm, because alleys are the lowest road-cleaning priority.
“If you have a snowfall like you did last year, then nobody gets out of those garages and goes to work the next morning.”
The committee will continue to discuss the issue Tuesday afternoon.
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