City ‘doing the best we can’ to clear snow from Yellowknife streets

The City of Yellowknife’s public works director says clearing recent snow off the streets isn’t as simple as some residents might wish.

In the face of online comments suggesting rutted roads are a nightmare to cross and city staff aren’t doing enough to fix things, Chris Greencorn told Cabin Radio that staff are “doing the best we can with the resources we’ve got.”

“It would require a significant expansion of fleet to increase our service,” Greencorn said on Thursday, “and we’re just not at that point yet.”

Whenever it snows, Greencorn said, street maintenance occurs throughout the day, which includes sanding and trying to make the surface smooth to improve road conditions. The city also schedules snow removal based on a priority system, starting with high-traffic areas and ending with cul-de-sacs.

Greencorn acknowledged there are currently streets with ruts and said staff have been “logging a lot of hours” to address them.

“Every day we are blading those ruts,” he said, “but when we blade snow over into ruts to try to smooth them out, people just drive straight into the ruts again.”

While Greencorn said he understands why people may do this, he asked drivers to straddle ruts where possible rather than drive in them. He also recommended slowing down to meet road conditions.

“The only way to really get rid of the huge problem areas is to do a complete snow removal, and that’s what we’re doing right now,” he said. “We’re triaging the worst areas of town that we can’t make any headway on.”

According to Greencorn, the city’s fleet includes three graders, a loader, dump trucks, bobcats and two sanders. Usually, two to four staff work throughout the day and around seven staff work at night. When there’s a large amount of snowfall, he said, “it’s all hands on deck” and the city will reach out to contractors if needed, although contractors often have commitments to other clients.

Greencorn said the city normally has a “very specific 18-week schedule” when it comes to snow removal.

“We’ve had staff that have been doing this for 30, 40 years. They’ve got it down to a science.”

But in his view, the city has been “thrown curveballs” this winter.

Last month’s extremely cold weather prompted the city to shut down all snow removal work to minimize equipment repairs and failures. The ensuing warm weather resulted in soft snow that leads to ruts, Greencorn said, and then the city received a large dump of snow last week.

According to data from Environment and Climate Change Canada, 11 centimetres of snow fell on February 2 and a further 6.2 centimetres fell on February 3.

“It’s creating a bit of a backlog for us to catch up on,” Greencorn acknowledged.