City lowers threshold for snow clearing

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This article was published 05/01/2023 (1233 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

From now on it will take less snowfall to spur snow-clearing operations in Brandon.

The threshold for starting snow clearing used to be 18 centimetres but was recently reduced to 13 cm as part of several changes to the city’s snow-clearing policies announced late last year.

On Wednesday, the city’s general manager of operations, Patrick Pulak, told the Sun the change applies to three types of designated roads in the city: P1A, P1 and P2.

Priority one “A” streets are the city’s busiest arterial routes. Priority one routes without the “A” focus on arterial and collector streets as well as roads on bus routes and some designated residential streets. Priority two streets are all remaining streets and roads.

So now, after 13 cm of snow has fallen, Brandon will initiate a citywide plow within 24 hours, starting with the highest-priority routes and ending with the lowest-priority routes.

Another change made last year is setting a goal for P1A routes to be completely cleared within 24 hours of the end of a snowfall event. According to Pulak, a set target didn’t exist before.

The city’s back lanes are considered priority three and are expected to be plowed at least one day before scheduled garbage and recycling pickups.

Any highways or provincial roads are the responsibility of Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure.

There’s now a rule in place allowing salt to be used on P1 routes only when it is -16 C or warmer, unless ordered by the city’s director of public works.

Pulak said that policy is in place for a few reasons.

“It’s incredibly hard on the road surface and frankly, anywhere below -16 C, it’s not effective because it won’t melt the snow,” Pulak said.

“The idea is that anywhere from -16 C and colder, we’ll use a sand mixture rather than salt … the residential routes, if we put salt on them, I don’t think you’d have any grass on anybody’s lawn where the snow got piled up. And frankly, they just don’t have the traffic that you see in other areas.”

The final two changes are based around managing large amounts of snow after a snowfall.

It’s now stated as a priority for public works to remove high piles of snow at intersections to improve visibility and sight lines for motorists.

Pulak said this became very important in late winter and early spring last year, when Manitoba was hit with several snow-dumping Colorado low weather systems in consecutive weeks.

“It’s not so much that you run out of room [for snow] in the medians, but that it interrupts those sightlines you need for turning corners,” he said.

There’s also a specification for when snow needs to be removed from the city when there is no more room to store snow on boulevards.

The series of Colorado lows last year stretched the city’s snow-clearing workforce to the point where city council authorized a $100,000 expenditure to hire a contractor to carry away collected snow in trucks while municipal crews focused on clearing streets.

Brandon collects cleared snow at the north end of the Eastview Landfill.

At Tuesday’s Brandon City Council meeting, Coun. Shawn Berry (Ward 7) spoke of a constituent in their 70s who had their vehicle blocked by a two-foot-high snow pile after their street was plowed.

Berry said that while residents can check if their street has or has not been plowed yet, there needs to be a better way for the city to communicate that streets will be plowed within 24 to 48 hours.

Pulak pointed to a page on the city’s website where residents along snow routes can find out if a parking ban has been implemented on their street by receiving email notifications, but said something needs to be worked out to contact people who don’t have access to the internet or a cellphone.

» cslark@brandonsun.com

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