Sidewalk Snow Plowing Consolidated In The South-Central Peninsula

It might not be winter just yet on the calendar, but Saint John residents have an idea of what snow removal will look like this year.

Tim O’Reilly, the city’s director of parks and transportation, presented an overview of the 2021-22 Winter Management Plan at Monday’s council meeting.

Coincidentally, as councillors were hearing about the plan, city works crews were out in force dealing with a mix of snow, ice pellets, and freezing rain throughout the city.

O’Reilly said last season was considered “light” with fewer and less intense storms than previous years.

“Even with the light season, we identified several service improvements which we are implementing for the upcoming season,” said O’Reilly.

Typically, local and rural streets are plowed by one-ton trucks, but after citizen feedback and outcomes from the city’s measured service objectives, changes were made for the upcoming season.

“For the upcoming season, we have already reviewed streets previously plowed by the smaller trucks and have transitioned over a quarter of them to larger plow trucks, which can plow streets much more effectively than smaller trucks, ultimately providing a better level of service for those streets,” said O’Reilly.

The city remains separated into 27 large street plowing routes, with operators assigned to each route for the day shift and night shift.

O’Reilly said there will be no changes to sidewalk plowing across Saint John, however, the South-Central Peninsula will see its four routes consolidated into three.

“For this season, and I will be clear, there are no reductions from last season to the number of sidewalks that we are plowing,” he said.

“So, what we are simply doing in the South-Central Peninsula as we had four sidewalk plow routes, and we are simply consolidating that down to three routes.”

In total, there are 11 sidewalk plow routes for the upcoming season.

O’Reilly also noted that the city will continue to enhance the use of technology to help plow services.

“We have implemented GPS and we are using that internally to track the progress of snow being cleared,” he said.

However, looking toward the future, O’Reilly added the city is looking at using GPS to map out sidewalk plow routes.

“When we get to that point it will allow us to better inform street and sidewalk cooperators to be consistent in terms of how they plow, but also provide better information to the public in terms of when they can expect a service to arrive.”

You can view the plan for yourself on the city’s website.