Round-the-clock efforts mean winter storm recovery ahead of schedule

Saskatoon continues to dig out from last weekend’s severe winter storm.  Currently nearly 300 road crew individuals are working on the snow removal effort, with progress continuing day and night.  
 
“Our efforts in residential neighbourhoods have been around the clock. Progress is better than anticipated, and many neighbourhoods have been bumped up in the schedule. Should this pace continue, we’re estimating to move through the residential neighbourhood schedule  sooner than the originally planned date of Friday this week,” says Terry Schmidt, General Manager of Transportation and Construction. “Because of this we urge everyone to check our online schedule often for the latest updates.” 
 
The priority is to send snow removal crews to as many residential neighbourhoods as quickly as possible. This will mean that there may be impacts on parking availability in the neighbourhoods when the snow clearing is completed. Residents are not required to move their vehicle but, if able, crews will appreciate more space to complete the work and the ability to clear streets more fully.  After the initial pass through a neighbourhood, piles of snow may be left in places that interfere with someone's ability to pull in and out of their driveway or another inconvenient situation. These situations have been identified and crews have started returning to those locations for clean-up work. After clearing has been completed in all neighborhoods city-wide, crews will return to streets for additional clean-up work.
  

It is anticipated by the end of this evening snow removal crews will have passed through 48 residential areas, or 75 per cent of the City. 

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who is working day and night, sacrificing time away from friends and family to get the city moving again,” says Schmidt. “And once again thank you to the people of Saskatoon, for helping your neighbours, remaining patient during the city-wide snow clean-up, and for staying safe around the snow removal equipment on our streets as we try and restore our roadways as best as possible to how they were before this massive storm.” 

Please do not push snow out onto the street when clearing snow from sidewalks and driveways, as this can clog up streets with even more snow and continue to create accessibility issues.