Starting Wednesday, residents in the Griesbach neighbourhood could start seeing no-parking signs near their homes as the City of Edmonton trials windrow pickups in the area.
The actual pickups aren’t scheduled to start until Friday but the no parking signs must be posted at least 24 hours ahead of time.
“This trial will help the city assess its process and cost for windrow pickup in residential areas,” the city said in a news release.
Andrew Grant, general supervisor of infrastructure field operations, parks and roads services, said the cost of the windrow pilot will be covered in the 2022 budget.
When it comes to expanding to other residential neighbourhoods, he said it would depend on the type and size of roads, as well as the cost.
“We’re definitely in the early stages of planning what that operation would look like. And as we get more into it, you know, we’ll start to identify and look at what inventory we can do that in and how much we can actually do with the resources we have today.
“So that will definitely be part of the conversation with city council in the spring,” Grant said.
Griesbach was chosen because of its “diverse inventory,” Grant said. It has many different types of road, the city said, which will let crews test and monitor windrow pickup on different surfaces.
Vehicles that are parked in the no parking areas will be subject to a “courtesy tow to a nearby location within the Griesbach community,” the city said.
If you can’t find your vehicle, contact Cliff’s Towing at 780-451-1555.
“These blower crews aren’t able to maneuver around parked vehicles like our plowing crews are,” Grant said. “They need to operate in a straight line.”
Grant pointed out that a Phase 2 parking ban remains in effect and people are asked to move their vehicles from the street “proactively” rather than “reactively,” when they see equipment coming down their road.
That would be a big challenge if the windrow-removal pilot was expanded to more neighbourhoods, Grant explained.
“One of our biggest challenges is going to be compliance with parking. Residential roads are notably smaller. They don’t have the same width as some of our priority one and two roadways.
“Our pickup equipment is large. It has to run side by side in order for us to pick up the snow, processes through the big snow blowers, and get uploaded into the big trucks.”
Some residential areas are too narrow or have curves that are too tight to allow this equipment to get through.
“We need to be strategic in where we trial this to make sure that we can walk in and simulate some of those challenges and then look at… what are our alternatives?”
Dramatic temperature swings — along with periods of extreme cold and snowfall — have made January tough for snow-and-ice removal crews in Edmonton.
Grant said Tuesday they’ve had to quickly pivot operations to respond to changing and challenging conditions.
Edmonton’s snow-removal policy is to clear down to as close to the pavement as possible in residential neighborhoods.
Grant said alleys are cleared before the main residential road so that the snow removed from alleys can be collected by the larger equipment clearing the streets.
Once crews have completed clearing a road in a residential neighbourhood, specialized equipment removes windrows that are blocking driveways and crosswalks. This equipment follows the graders, but not immediately, Grant said, it can take up to several hours.
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