City changes plan to let weather melt ice and snow, will salt Brampton residential roads starting Tuesday

Bramptonguardian.com
April 17, 2018
By Graeme Frisque

The weekend ice storm and blast of mid-April winter weather was still causing issues on residential and secondary roads in Brampton early this week.

The city announced plans to address the problem on Tuesday (April 17) - a change from Monday, when the plan was to let Mother Nature do the job.

Many Brampton residents have taken to social media with photos and stories of snow and ice-covered residential and secondary roads and sidewalks throughout the city, noting an apparent lack of plowing and de-icing equipment on city streets during and in the wake of the storm.

According to an update received from the city in a release sent at 12:40 p.m. on Tuesday, the city will dispatch available resources to residential and secondary roads later in the day. According to a city spokesperson, no snowplows will be dispatched to residential roads, only salters.

"Later today all available resources will be deployed to salt residential streets to help melt the snow and ice surfaces. All roads are expected to be salted by tomorrow (Wednesday)," read the release. "The city has also secured some sidewalk tractors and is awaiting their arrival so they can be immediately deployed in strategic locations."

Tuesday, the city offered two reasons as to why residential and secondary roads were left unplowed:

"With a rainfall warning issued by Environment Canada and flood watches issued by our local conservation authorities on Monday, it was determined that plowing residential streets could block catch basins with ice and snow, increasing the risk of flooding."

"Like most municipalities, the majority of Brampton's winter operations are carried out by contract. When that contract finished at the end of March, most contractors redeployed their equipment and operators for the construction season," adding the lack of available resources led to a decision to focus on main and arterial roads.

However, the city sending out plows and salters today appears to be a new development.

An email sent to councillors on Monday morning by the city commissioner responsible for roads, Joe Pitushka, was posted by councillor Jeff Bowman on his Facebook page Monday afternoon.

The email, which The Brampton Guardian obtained a copy of, indicated the city staff originally planned to let rising temperatures through the week take care of the problem.

"All in all, the primaries are in good condition. For these same resources to complete the secondary roads, it will take anywhere from 3 to 4 days. Because of other commitments such as flood control and road repair, the secondary roads will not be addressed with us relying on the weather forecast showing temperatures rising to +9* C (sic) in the next few days," wrote Pitushka in the email.

Pitushka added that 85 per cent of the city's winter operations are carried out by contract, and despite a request to stay and help out to those operators who remained in the yard, the city could only retain less than half of them - which wasn't enough.

"They worked the maximum (hours) allowed under Ministry of Labour guidelines, i.e. 16 hours, concentrating on our primary road network system. All in all, the primaries are in good condition," added Pitushka.

When asked about the change in plans, a city spokesperson said it did not delay the clearing of roads as available crews were focused on major roads, while the decision to deploy the resources Tuesday was based on the forecast changing.

The city also tweeted out that it managed to secure the services of some sidewalk tractors, which it said would be "deployed in strategic locations" along with salters also on Tuesday.

Despite the outcome of the storm, and several resident complaints the city received about the condition of local streets, Pitushka said he doesn't recommend extending winter maintenance contracts moving forward in the off-chance such an event occurs again.

"The contract basically starts in November and is finished at the end of March. We pay a standby rate for every piece of equipment employed whether it is working or not during that period. At the end of March, the contractors, for the most part, redeploy their equipment for the construction season," he said.

"No-one (sic) can recall ever having a storm of this magnitude this far into spring. Paying standby for winter equipment until this time of the year knowing that a storm of any consequence has never occurred before, is not prudent nor is it recommended," he added in his email to councillors.