With the massive amounts of snow the City of Cranbrook received over the past few weeks, both city staff and the public have been recognized by council for their work in helping the community dig out.

“We’ve seen so many people in our community work hard to help where they can with snow clearing efforts, and it is important that they are recognized,” said Mayor Lee Pratt. “We’ve regularly seen neighbours helping neighbours dig each other out, clear sidewalks and help keep our community moving.”

“Public Works crews are working hard and staff are taking all the overtime they can handle to try keep up. Our team has been amazing in some pretty tough conditions over the past few weeks,” Mayor Pratt addeds. “I applaud the efforts of our staff to meet the needs of the community, while the department continues to battle staffing and resource challenges due to COVID protocols and schooling and childcare disruptions. I thank you!”

Snow removal crews work following a clearly outlined process to ensure that first priority routes are always kept open.

Those routes include major streets, hospital zones, roads accessing emergency service facilities, roads with severe grades and transit routes. There are 60 kms of first priority routes in Cranbrook and it takes four passes to clear those. That tallies to a total of 240kms of plowing required just to clear the first priority routes before being able to start the next priority routes. If it continues to snow or the snowfall starts up again, crews begin again with the first priority routes.

“We work closely with first responder agencies to determine the primary routes they use within the city, as well as the primary routes they use to access areas served outside of the city,” said Mike Matejka, Manager of Roads and Infrastructure.

“Local streets are not included in these emergency response routes as it often takes all our available resources to keep the 60km of first-priority routes maintained during and after a winter storm event. In years of heavy snowfall like we are experiencing, we will actively monitor all streets, including residential areas, to determine if additional snow removal or maintenance is required to maintain safe access.”

Operators are working to hit some of the smaller alleys and cul-de-sacs to finish all the snow clearing. If your street has been missed, please contact Public Works by calling 311.

You can learn more about the city’s winter road maintenance and follow plowing activities with PLOWCranbrook our real-time tracking app by visiting www.cranbrook.ca, go to the ‘City Services’ tab, and click on ‘Winter Road Maintenance’.

Lead image: A City of Cranbrook plow operates along Victoria Avenue Jan. 11. Carrie Schafer/e-KNOW photo

City of Cranbrook

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