'A lot of lessons learned': Brandon adjusts snow-clearing policies

(File)

Following a 2022 that saw massive amounts of snow in the early months of the year, the City of Brandon reviewed its snow-clearing policy and made changes where needed to improve the service.

Patrick Pulak, the general manager of operations for the city, said a lot of lessons were learned following the significant snowfall.

One of the main changes made following a review by the Streets and Roads Department was to lower the number of centimetres of fallen snow needed to trigger snow-clearing operations.

Brandon went from a threshold of 18 centimetres, to now 13 centimetres. Crews start with P1A roads, which are arterial roadways, followed by P1 roads, which are collector routes, and then P2 being residential.

"When we get comments back from the public and we get comments back from (city) council, the decision was made to trigger down that response level," said Pulak.

Other changes following the review include having a policy goal to maintain a high level of service for transportation networks, requiring P1A routes be cleared within 24 hours following the end of snowfall, only using salt for snow clearing purposes when the temperature is above -16 Celsius, prioritizing the removal of high snow piles and framework to know when snow needs to be removed from boulevards due to a lack of snow storage.

Before these changes, the city never had a specified timeline to clear roads, crews learned salt wasn't effective in colder temperatures and when it came to snow piles, Pulak said they have a better understanding of when to deal with intersections and sight lines to help improve safety.

"Our policy is a living, breathing document. It's not something we decided we're gonna sit down at the end of the year and do a review. It's just what we saw last spring, there was a lot of lessons learned."

He added the policy review is always an ongoing process.

"I mean, after every large snowfall, if there are things that we took away from it that we think we have to address our policy, we'll certainly do it."

As for this winter so far, Pulak said there hasn't been major problems with snow clearing, just the timing of when Mother Nature decided to strike.

"The only difficulty really has been it's over the holiday season, our snow clearing effort. So it makes it a little more difficult when you're trying to give your employees a lot of a holiday break."

He said snow-clearing efforts are good so far and crews will be working on the boulevards in the city by the weekend.