snow removal/clearing

[drone]

now that winter is slowly kicking in, I dread the lousy job snow crews do in Toronto. Why is it that in almost every city in the GTA removes the snow from the streets? Toronto just pushes it aside. We literally lose 6 feet of road. In Montreal, they would literally tow your car to remove the snow. I see cars buried in snow for months in the winter here in Toronto blocking the road

 

[nfitz]

Since moving to Toronto 5 years ago, I've been really impressed by how good snow removal is in Toronto compared to other southwestern Ontario cities. The last 2 winters they've trucked away the snowbanks on my street - and I've never seen that before. And the streets themselves have snow removed with less fallen snow than I see in other southwestern cities.

And the salting here seems to be much better than in other cities ... I drove through Montreal yesterday ... I was not impressed with how poorly the roads had been salted.

 

[Red Mosquito]

now that winter is slowly kicking in, I dread the lousy job snow crews do in Toronto. Why is it that in almost every city in the GTA removes the snow from the streets? Toronto just pushes it aside. We literally lose 6 feet of road. In Montreal, they would literally tow your car to remove the snow. I see cars buried in snow for months in the winter here in Toronto blocking the road

You really need to get out more. Compared to other northern cities, Toronto snow removal is very good. Some smaller Ontario towns that I have lived in, the plow takes days to get to the side streets.

 

[drone]

well, I've lived across 3 provinces, and many cities and I think Toronto's is sub par

 

[nfitz]

well, I've lived across 3 provinces, and many cities and I think Toronto's is sub par

Which cities? It's only really fair to compare to those with similiar climates. Comparing to those that always have significant snow every winter is hardly fair. The last 3 or 4 winters have had a lot of snows, but many winters have very little ... this year so far, for example.

Compared to Montreal though, we seem to do quite well. Take the laneways for example. While Toronto isn't quick to clean laneways, at least they do eventually. This is seldom if ever done in Montreal. And they are very quick to respond to requests here. I was quite amazed that I phoned the city at 7:30 pm one Saturday night, when it hadn't snowed that much for a week, saying I couldn't get up the hill in the laneway beside my house, because it had frozen, and was too icy. Not only did I get a live human being on the phone, who sounded like he knew what he was doing; 90 minutes later there was a city truck going down the laneway laying salt.

In Montreal, if I'd ever actually have gotten a human on the phone on a Saturday, they would have laughed themself silly if I'd suggest they do something with a city-owned laneway.

I'm sure that there will always be complaints and issues; but compared to other cities in the same climate (Kitchener, Mississauga), the removal here, and especially the salt application, is very good.
Historically Montreal's snow-removal on sidestreets was nothing short of an amazing military-like operation. Though from those I know who still live there, standards have slipped ... quite dramatically in some districts.

 

[PukeGreen]

Can't say I really think these complaints are valid at all, based on my experiences.

When there was a very significant snowfall a few winters ago in Toronto, they did in fact institute the plan where they towed cars out of the way to plow beneath. They also deployed melters, and routinely remove and dump tons of snow into depot locations. So it is simply incorrect to suggest that Toronto just "pushes it aside" or doesn't remove snow like Montreal does.

But they don't do this every time a few inches fall; that's for major storms, and frankly Toronto doesn't get many of those, especially compared to Montreal. It costs millions to clean up for each storm, and the City of Toronto is not exactly flush with money these days. Sure a few dozen more plows might expedite things by a few hours, but is that worth spending hundreds of millions more on equipment that will likely site idle 360 days a year? Probably not.

Comparisons are worthwhile, but Toronto is vastly larger and denser than many other Canadian towns and cities. Because of that the inconvenience of each snowfall may just seem worse than it does in smaller, less dense towns where fewer people are on the road and businesses and homes are more spread out. Cleanup is prioritized with main roads cleared first, so those cars you claim to have seen "buried in snow for months" were probably on small sidestreets, not blocking major thoroughfares.

Here's some info on Toronto's snow removal plans:
http://www.toronto.ca/transportation/snow/index.htm

And here's a study from 2004 analyzing 10 "snow disposal sites" around Toronto used for depositing dumped snow. Notice that it plans for "for accommodating 150,000 loads (approximately 2.6 million cubic metres) of uncompressed snow of in a two-week period". Not sure how many of these are currently in use, but I know some are because there has been controversy about salt from the melting piles leaching into the Don.
http://www.toronto.ca/wes/techservi...udy/pdf/snow_disposal_part_a_draft_report.pdf

 

[ladyscraper]

We are all going to die!!!! AVALANCHE!!

 

[picard102]

You really need to get out more. Compared to other northern cities, Toronto snow removal is very good. Some smaller Ontario towns that I have lived in, the plow takes days to get to the side streets.

So true. I'm up in Fort Frances right now, West of Thunder Bay, and snow removal is a joke. When the roads are cleared it's down to the ice and not the asphalt (no sand), they push the snow to the boulevard and into peoples driveways and it's been a week since we had 30cm of snow fall and none of the sidewalks are cleared.

Toronto does fairly well in comparison, but I think that has more to do with the panic snow instills in Southern Ontario.

 

[Epi]

They don't remove snow in York Region, they just plow it to the side. Except that up here there is a LOT of 'side', so it's fine.

 

[dt_toronto_geek]

I have no comparisons but downtown is cleared and sanded very efficiently. Secondary roads take a few days to get plouged after a big dump but they do get done.

Perhaps this was discussed elsewhere at some point in time, but I'm curious as to what ever happened to the Metro-melts (I think that's what they were called) from back in the 80's? They were slow but they seemed pretty efficient.

 

[drone]

nobody replied to my question, why do they just plow the snwo to the sides and they don't remove it.

 

[spider]

nobody replied to my question, why do they just plow the snwo to the sides and they don't remove it.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

[Asterix]

nobody replied to my question, why do they just plow the snwo to the sides and they don't remove it.

Actually, a couple people have replied to your question and pointed out that with higher volumes of snow, the city does physically remove it. Most years there are several dump sites throughout the city that see a couple weeks of steady streams of contracted dump trucks bringing in load after load from city streets.

Not everyone likes that idea though:

http://www.urbantoronto.ca/showthread.php?t=8936

 

[PukeGreen]

nobody replied to my question, why do they just plow the snwo to the sides and they don't remove it.

Please read the replies. Several people, including myself, addressed this above. My response was that they do in fact remove much of it.

But not all of it. And they plow it to the side first, then come along later with different mchines and do the removals, since that is is much slower. Perhaps it is that two-stage process which has caused to to believe that none of the snow is removed.

 

[Jonny5]

Getting residents to shovel their sidewalks is the problem.

I have noticed a few properties that have never cleared their snow after a storm at all in the past four years. Not once. I've called the city to complain. Nothing happened. These are not elderly residents, most often young and able-bodied people renting the property. The worst are owners of a corner lot. It's very rare they shovel all the way around. Of course, there are plenty of sidewalks adjacent to city properties that never seem to be cleared either!