WATCH: The city is taking heat for how long it’s taking to clear residential neighbourhoods… and windrows. Eric Szeto explains.
EDMONTON — One week after the city’s first major snowfall, Edmonton’s snow boss admits residential blading hasn’t gone as well as planned.
“We’ve had some struggles this week,” says Bob Dunford, director of roadway maintenance. “Between the actual volume of snow that we were dealing with, a lot of on-street parking issues … we didn’t get the turnout we wanted to for contract loaders.”
There were 1,825 seasonal parking ban violations between Nov. 28 and 29. Bylaw ticketed 1,760 and gave warnings to the rest.
“We are behind schedule on the neighbourhood blading,” Dunford adds. Some areas that were scheduled to be cleared on Wednesday haven’t been finished yet, but crews plan to work Saturday and Sunday to finish the job.
A list of the neighbourhoods to be cleared on the weekend is posted on the city’s website.
“These aren’t areas that nothing was done; these were areas where we got 50, 60 per cent done. It was basically not as successful as we would have liked.”
Dunford says the sheer amount of snow presented an ongoing challenge and admits the city may have bit off more than it could chew.
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“When we did our snow-pack measurements prior to starting, we were measuring snow pack across the city — the average just over five centimetres — but some areas were as high as eight centimetres of pack.
“It was challenging in a lot of aspects. I still believe the five-day fixed schedule is achievable in a more regular blading cycle, but this one was definitely an exceptional one, and I think we overreached ourselves.”
The city also started a one-side-of-the-street parking ban pilot project in four Edmonton neighbourhoods. As of Dec. 3, 445 violations took place in those communities, including 394 warnings.
Meanwhile, the issue of windrow removal was thrust into the spotlight Thursday evening by a series of tweets.
Taylor Chadwick posted a photo that showed a large windrow trapping vehicles parked along 124th Street, where he works.
Chadwick says several people called 311 to report the issue. After several phone calls, a number of tweets — and 63 retweets — a city crew returned about an hour later to the area to remove the windrow.
The city says the complaints came in as crews were midway through their work.
“124th Street can be a very active street day and night,” explains Dunford. “Working on that, even on the night shift sometimes, can create some issues where we’re trying to scrape up the additional snow and set it up for the snow blower to come behind and he still has significant on-street parking.”
The city adds the area was challenging to clear because there was no parking ban in place so crews were trying to work around the parked vehicles. Officials say there were trucks following a few hours after the graders to remove the windrows.
“We ask for their patience when we are in the process of working on it,” says Dunford.
“It can take several hours to do that type of work… When you get a lot more busy evening traffic, it creates a problem for us, because when can we physically work there? There isn’t a parking ban along there for us doing our work. A lot of businesses depend on on-street parking along 124th. You’ve got to take into consideration, 124th Street has changed dramatically in the last two years… It’s become a very active area. It’s turning into another Whyte Avenue, really.”
Dunford says anyone with complaints or concerns should call 311 or use the 311 app.
“If they’re concerned about something, 311 is available to them 24/7.”
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