Toronto prepared for its war on winter, officials say

Thestar.com
November 16, 2018
David Rider

The city of Toronto has launched its annual war on winter with “snow fighters” ready around the clock to keep roads and sidewalks salted and plowed.

After a military-style parade of plows and trucks for the news cameras Thursday, Mayor John Tory noted the first forecast of significant snow for Toronto since last spring.

Mayor John Tory, along with City of Toronto staff from Transportation Services and Toronto Water, announced the city’s winter preparedness plans, including snow clearing, road salting and response to watermain breaks.

“City crews are ready,” for a months-long campaign that will cost Toronto more than $90 million, he declared.

“Through planning, technology and access to a robust fleet of snow-clearing vehicles, we are confident that residents and visitors will be able to get around safely and effectively all winter long.”

Myles Curry, the city’s transportation director, struck a similar note of bravado.

“Between our contracted staff and our city staff, we have approximately 1,500 able snow fighters that are available 24 hours a day,” he told reporters at a city facility on Eastern Ave., where a mountain of road salt awaits the white stuff.

“We have staff right now preparing for the winter event we expect later today.”

The city’s fighting force includes 600 road plows, 300 sidewalk plows and 200 salters either owned or contracted, with additional vehicles available for use if needed. When big storms are looming, some city staff sleep near the plows, ready to jump into action, Tory noted admiringly.

Most snowstorms batter the city for 14 to 16 hours. Salters are the first to be dispatched, to main roads and expressways and then local roads. Plows following on roads and non-residential public sidewalks if more than a few centimetres fall.

Curry said this year city staff are prioritizing bike paths in the downtown core and on the Martin Goodman trail. They are also using more weather-sensing technology than ever before, including patrol trucks and “weather information stations” gauging air and road temperature and more.

Citizens have a role in moving vehicles off roads about to be plowed, if possible, and reporting unplowed snow to the city’s 311 service. Curry asked people to wait at least 16 hours until after the snow before calling to give city crews a chance to finish their cleanup.

Still, winter has won battles before, if not the war. Most famously, in 1999 then-mayor Mel Lastman called in the army to fight drifts and get people moving, to the delight of the rest of Canada.

Last April, the city was caught off-guard by a mid-April snowstorm that blanketed Toronto.

Increased freeze-and-thaw cycles in recent years weaken pavement and cause holes to form. City crews this year have filled more than 230,330 potholes. That’s an increase over the previous two years but less than in 2015 and 2014.

Potholes cost taxpayers because people with damaged cars can seek compensation. The Fixer reported the city faced about 900 such claims just in January of this year, more than the total in all of 2017.

Toronto’s city manager has asked, with Tory’s blessing, all city departments including transportation services to try to find ways to freeze spending in 2019 budget submissions.

Tory said residents expect the city to try to find efficiencies and ways to improve services at no cost or with savings, and that the city’s war on winter will not shortchanged.

“We are not going to let potholes remain unfilled,” he said.

“We are not going to let the streets drift into a state of disrepair in order to have the budget work out. We will do the things we need to do to make sure we provide the services to people and keep their infrastructure in the state that it needs to be in.”