Edmontonians can expect worse snow-clearing service in the upcoming winter season compared to last winter, according to a report detailing results of this past winter’s snow-clearing efforts that will be presented to council on Monday.
The city said one main difference will be the amount of time it takes crews to get to different types of paths and roads. However, with a rising budget each year, the city hopes to get closer to last season’s response times by 2026.
At the same time, the city expects the number of roads it must service to also go up, meaning the budget will be stretched even further and service levels may not return.
Pedestrian facilities will all be serviced on a longer timeline than the previous season.
Manually-cleared paths, bus benches and sandboxes will be serviced with 22 days, up more than a week from the previous season’s standard of 13 days. By 2026, the city hopes to lower that time to 19 days.
City sidewalks, ramps, staircases, paths, pedestrian bridges and bus stops will be serviced within six days instead of four, and that will not change by the 2026 budget.
The standard for prioritized bike network routes and facilities will not change, with one day being the goal, the city said.
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Residential roads will wait two more days to be tackled, with the goal being service delivery within 10 days instead of eight. The city aims to get back to an eight-day standard by 2026.
Arterial roads will wait one more day in the upcoming winter season to be serviced, with a goal of five days instead of four, but the city aims to get back to four days by the following season.
Collector and industrial roads will experience no change, with the standard being service within five days.
The city noted that during a snowfall, crews are out clearing major roads like Whitemud Drive and Yellowhead Trail and sanding on and off ramps, bridge decks and river valley hills.
Another change is that there will be one third of the staff members — five instead of 15 — enforcing parking bans and no tow trucks to pull away cars blocking snow plows.
“With reduced parking enforcement, a greater emphasis on voluntary compliance is needed to avoid impacts to the snow and ice crews’ ability to complete snow clearing quickly and efficiently during parking bans,” said the city.
The reduction in service comes after city council funded only part of an enhanced snow-clearing budget during budget deliberations in December 2022.
In summer of 2022, city council approved a one-time increase to the snow budget of $4.7 million, bringing the total budget for 2022-23 to $63.6 million.
During budget deliberations, the question came up if the councillors wanted to again fund an extra chunk of money on top of the base snow budget, and they agreed on 20 per cent of the suggested amount. The extra funding was $11 million over four years.
The snow clearing budget will be, in total, $60.9 million in 2023, $65.1 million in 2024, $67.6 million in 2025 and $68.5 million in 2026.
Ward pihêsiwin Coun. Tim Cartmell said at Monday’s meeting, he will ask if priorities can be reexamined from last year’s snow clearing process.
Cartmell said he will ask if snow removal can be coordinated with waste services; if windrows can be avoided and definitely not put in school drop-off zones and bike lanes; if crews can exercise judgment and not plow a road that doesn’t need it; and not ticket property owners if they can’t clear sidewalks because of windrows.
He said he also wants better communication as his constituents told him the notifications during residential parking bans weren’t always accurate.
“There were some mixes there — sometimes the plows came when we said, sometimes they came before we said, sometimes they didn’t come when we said (they would),” said Cartmell.
“Sometimes enforcement followed the plows, sometimes it didn’t.”
The city report said during the last parking ban of the season in January and February, 2,875 tickets were cancelled, but 144 were cancelled due to a “notification error.”
In that case, crews started clearing roads before residents were alerted to the parking ban. This mistake was noticed Jan. 27 and tickets issued the prior two days were cancelled in the affected areas, said the city.
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