By Sheldon Spackman

City road crews move on from snow to potholes

Mar 21, 2019 | 5:03 PM

Crews have wrapped up the City of Red Deer’s Snow and Ice Control program for another season.

Public Works Manager Greg Sikora says it officially wrapped up today after two and a half weeks of clearing Green and Grey routes throughout the city.

“It’s been an interesting year,” says Sikora. “It’s been challenging at times, it started off the beginning of September, I think it was September 21 we had about six inches of snow. This year has been anything but a typical year.”

Sikora says they’ve learned a lot from this year.

“We’re hearing a lot of feedback from the community,” adds Sikora. “We respect their comments and we understand some of the frustration that’s occurring with regards to the program. Our Snow and Ice Control policy that guides our actions is based on a typical snow year, which this really has not been, and it’s left us with some challenges with respect to being more flexible and nimble in changing weather conditions.”

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Sikora says the public is essentially asking them to ‘Get it done quicker and start sooner’ when it comes to snow removal.

“When we developed the policy, which was based on about 17 years of historical data of our snowfall accumulation, we set triggers and targets for which we run our program,” he explains. “The trigger for Green and Grey routes, which are the residential areas, is about a 10 cm snowpack. In a typical year, we would see that 10 cm snowpack develop in January, but the trigger really wasn’t met until the end of February.”

In terms of budget, Sikora says they have it set for a full calendar year and they have ‘more than adequate budget’ for the balance of this year.

“We do an annual performance review with council,” he explains. “What we do is we get the feedback from the community and what council hears and we look for opportunities to better our program with existing funds or if council sees fit, to increase service levels or change triggers or targets to meet the community need. What we heard this year quite loud and clear was get it done sooner.”

Sikora feels the experience of this past winter is a great opportunity to review their Snow and Ice Control policy.

“To look at the language that’s within it, to develop some flexibility that will allow us to change our operations to be more nimble as required. Especially in changing weather conditions as we just saw.”

Now that snow clearing appears to be done for the season, Sikora says potholes become the focus moving forward.

“Although potholes occur year-round, we’ve really ramped up our campaign for pothole repairs,” Sikora declares. “Typically, potholes show up in the spring when we get water infiltration into the road and potholes start to develop. So we’ve been active repairing potholes, I would say for the last about two weeks. It’s our major campaign that’s rolling out right now and we’ll continue to follow that through spring.”

In terms of what kind of pothole season is anticipated, Sikora says it’s largely weather dependent.

“What we typically see is about anywhere from 10,000-14,000 potholes annually and we see the lion’s share of those right in the spring. Then there’s a portion that stabilizes through the summer months and then the fall as things start to dry up for the winter.”

Sikora reminds residents to call the City’s Public Works department at 403-342-8238 if they spot a large pothole or one that’s emerging.

“If you see a routine maintenance item that needs to be done, by all means use our ‘Report a Problem’ on our webpage and we’ll get to it fairly quickly,” says Sikora. “We’re here to serve the community and we enjoy getting feedback. It can be challenging at times but we do the best we can to meet the community’s expectations.”