Sidewalk clearing capacity limited: City

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As the City of Moncton continues to grow, there are still some streets that only have the sidewalks serviced on one side because of limited capacity of equipment and operators.

Don Morehouse, the city’s director of public works, said the number of machines provide a capacity to maintain 305 kilometres of sidewalk. However, the city has a total of 487.96 kilometres of sidewalk, which means that 180.88 kilometres of sidewalks are not maintained. In most cases, those are in places where there are sidewalks on both sides of the street, and only one side gets the ongoing maintenance treatment after a storm.

The good news, Morehouse said, is that the city is planning to add at least one more Trackless sidewalk plow for next winter, bringing the total number of machines to 17. Council also supported buying more machines back in 2018 when the city reached capacity.

Morehouse said the practice of maintaining sidewalks in the winter is getting more challenging with storms that cover everything with snow, followed by rain that soaks the snow and then cold temperatures that freeze it, followed by mild temperatures that melt it all again.

Morehouse brought the sidewalk clearing plan to council last fall and made some changes before it was approved. The sidewalk clearing plan, as outlined on the city’s website, provides high priority to sidewalks in the downtown core, followed by business and hospital areas and then residential areas.

Morehouse said the public works department sticks with the plan by doing sidewalks in order of priority after a storm, and then going back over them in sequence for ongoing maintenance. That means that the equipment might be going back over the same sidewalks for more plowing, salting and sanding while seemingly ignoring the others that aren’t part of the program.

He said sidewalks require ongoing maintenance after storms, as they can be filled back in with snow and ice. There’s also changing conditions as the snow and ice melts through the day and freezes again at night, resulting in patches of slippery ice.

“It isn’t like a pedestrian walkway where there’s one service cycle and we’re done, we have to continue to work it and be aware of the changing conditions. It rains, it melts, it freezes and all the work you’ve done is gone because the sand sinks to the bottom of a puddle,” Morehouse said.

The routes are 20 kilometres long and operators travel the routes to clear away patches of ice and snow to provide a reasonable level of traction. He said the city gets many service requests, especially after a storm.

The priority sidewalks are supposed to be opened up within 24 hours, the second priority after 48 hours and the priority three sidewalks cleared within five days. But if the city experiences back-to-back snowstorms like a couple of years ago, the system resets itself and everything gets delayed because loading and hauling snow becomes a huge operation.

Morehouse said homeowners are not responsible to clear sidewalks in front of their home, but they are responsible to not move snow from their driveway onto the sidewalk.

The city says the public works department maintains 513.56 kilometres of streets, or 1,050.09 if you consider streets with two lanes. Plowing of the Gunningsville Bridge and the Brenda Robertson Bridge is done by the Town of Riverview under contract to the provincial government.