Some residential roads in town will see snow removal in the coming weeks.
The Town of Okotoks is beginning a pilot program to clear ice and snow from select Priority 3 streets. In Okotoks, Priority 1 roads are main collectors like Southridge and Northridge Drives, Milligan Drive and other roads like Cimarron Boulevard; Priority 2 includes arterial streets like Elma Street, Downey Road or Cimarron Way; and Priority 3 is all other residential streets.
Deputy CAO Nancy Weigel said the pilot program will remove snow to address challenges in residential neighbourhoods with drainage and streets that are difficult to navigate by vehicle or for pedestrians.
“They’re going to look and record and determine how that helps with drainage efforts of residential and commercial areas,” said Weigel.
Chris Radford, operations director for the Town, said his team has been reviewing snow policies over the past few years, and conversations with the transportation crew revealed it would be a good opportunity to run a pilot program for Priority 3 snow removal.
“Neighbourhood removals would be representative of the biggest challenges on our local roads, from a snow build-up perspective, from a removal perspective,” said Radford.
The Town is running its pilot on roads that have historically had issues reported with drainage and impassibility, he said.
Crews will measure what effort it takes to maintain roads on a regular basis and which equipment would be necessary, as well as a cost analysis and management analysis, recording how much snow had to be hauled, he said.
“We can extrapolate that out and inform any other council inquiries regarding a lot of these P-3 local roads that we have been fielding calls about over the past year,” said Radford.
He said a lot of the issues stem from streets that are not in direct sunlight, so solar radiation on warmer days has little impact.
There will be some cost in the spring to repair some roads, which he said is a normal cost associated with snow removal.
“When you go in and do this kind of a clearing you are going to scrape up a few things, so we want to look and quantify what damage and repair costs would be to the curb, gutter, sidewalks, those kinds of things so we can give council a report on what the actual true cost was,” said Radford.
He said the pilot project will help inform future snow policies and identify whether it’s feasible to clear local Priority 3 roads.
Coun. Ed Sands said it’s an “interesting project,” and hopes it provides solutions for tricky winters like the current season, which had several accumulated inches of snow over two months followed by a cold snap and a chinook system.
“I find on my little piece of street frontage right now, the street ice, the packed snow on the street is higher than my sidewalk, so when it melts the sidewalk is covered in ice,” said Sands. “I put salt and grit on it and it melts, and when the street melts it covers my driveway with ice again, so I’m feeling a challenge with that.
“It would be nice to find out if there’s an ultimate solution for that.”
Radford said the current situation, where snow pack on most residential roads sits higher than sidewalk and driveway levels, is posing a challenge for many residents and business owners in town.
With every winter being slightly different depending on weather and temperatures, he said it’s difficult to define a precise solution but hopes the pilot program will help.
“This is a bit of an evaluation to see if there could be some improvements on a prioritized level to relieve some of those areas where nature just doesn’t help us much,” said Radford. “It gives that freeze-thaw every night and the cycle just continues and continues.”
Mayor Bill Robertson said regardless of the situation on local roads, it’s important for residents to keep their sidewalks clear to prevent pedestrians from suffering falls.
“Probably 99 per cent of the people in town have done an excellent job of snow removal, but the one per cent where people have to move out to the roadway because the sidewalk in front of somebody’s house is very treacherous,” said Robertson. “I will be phoning protective services regarding some very dangerous sections in town, just the ones I’ve come across.”
The results of the snow removal pilot program will come back to council at an undetermined future meeting.
