The City of Edmonton has announced it will begin this winter’s first round of residential blading on Monday, Feb. 10 at 12:01 a.m.
“We’ve initiated this blading cycle in residential areas to ensure residents can move safely through neighbourhoods,” said Andrew Grant, general supervisor of infrastructure field operations for the city’s parks and roads services department.
“We’re looking to address some of the slush conditions.”
Crews will be going through various neighbourhoods each day, including alleys as well. A full schedule can be found here, and a live map showing where blading is currently happening can be found here.
Vehicles should be removed from residential streets on the designated days.
Read More: Edmonton hasn’t done a residential blading cycle yet this winter. Why not?
“We’re asking motorists to please move their vehicles to allow our crews to complete this work safely and efficiently,” Grant said.
If crews cannot complete a street on its scheduled day, they will return the following week on the same day. Residential blading does not occur over the weekend.
In general, crews pave the snowpack down to five centimetres, however, because of recent warm weather, some areas will see blading down to bare pavement.
“Our teams have been continuing to monitor the conditions throughout the residential areas, but with the thaw-freeze cycles that have been happening in Edmonton, we haven’t seen the proper conditions to get in there and maintain our snowpack to five centimetres,” Grant said.
“We were hoping for some colder weather in order to add some stability to the snow so we were able to blade it down. Looking at the forecast it doesn’t look like that’s happening.”
The city plans to call in additional contractors to help remove windrows after crews come through.
“We need to ensure that we’re providing safe passage for all Edmontonians throughout the residential areas,” Grant said.
Crews will be working five days a week, around the clock. The decision comes after a spike in 311 notifications about unsafe driving conditions.
“It gets to a point where you look at the number of notifications that you have and we had to make the decision whether we’re just going to address spot plowing or we’re just going to plow, and we’ve made the decision to just plow,” Grant said.
This is the first time this winter that residents of Silver Berry and Gold Bar will test out the city’s new snow removal pilot program.
During this pilot, the side of the road with house numbers ending in an odd number will be placed under a parking ban and bladed on Mondays. The side of the road with house numbers ending in an even number will be placed under a parking ban and then be bladed on Tuesdays.
The city said bylaw officers will be out enforcing in those two neighbourhoods.
Grant said he is hopeful the residential areas can be cleared out within seven days.
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