City snow crews addressing residential problem areas

Over the past week, snow crews prioritized improving mobility on residential streets in 65 neighbourhoods across our city. Crews are returning to residential streets that continue to present driveability challenges and streets that were inadvertently missed in residential neighbourhoods.  

“It’s been our objective, through increasing capacity of our snow crews, working around the clock, and prioritizing residential streets to get to you as soon as possible,” says Terry Schmidt, General Manager of Transportation & Construction. “Fast tracking the schedule has resulted in some streets being missed or driveability challenges still remaining. Crews are already returning to those locations to fix the problems and will continue to do so over the coming days.” 

The Saskatoon road network is approximately 4,000 lane kilometres, with 2,400 lane kilometres, or roughly 60 percent, in residential neighbourhoods alone. In addition to the size of the network, some neighbourhoods present unique challenges such as: narrow streets, street parking, higher winds leading to increased drifting, and limited space to push snow. Depending on the characteristics of the street and availability of equipment, at times a grader was used for the work, where other times a loader, skid steer or other smaller equipment were used. The streets where graders worked together with loaders and skid steers have seen better results. 

“This is the largest response to a snow event in the City’s history, and as we go we continue to learn what works and what hasn’t worked,” says Schmidt. “Our City received 35-plus centimetres of snowfall in 48 hours, making it one of the largest snowfall events ever for our City. This has been a challenging situation for residents and crews alike and we’re committed to doing everything we can, with as many crews members as possible.” 

The City reports nearly 1,000 work orders for problem areas in residential neighbourhoods. As reports are made, they are prioritized, tracked, and crews will address these concerns over the coming weeks. 

As is the forecast for today, if Saskatoon experiences more snowfall, crews will need to prioritize our priority or highest traffic streets as usual.  

Winter driving conditions remain while this extensive cleanup is underway. Please drive with caution. For more information visit saskatoon.ca/snow