THUNDER BAY -- Environment Canada’s snowfall warning for Thunder Bay has raised some questions regarding the city’s winter road control.
Since the snowfall began residents across the city have questioned the city’s tactics on social media in regard to keeping the roads safe.
Road manager Brad Adams said the city has a limit on the number of hours operators can travel and operate equipment, so they have to be conscious of those periods.
“In those hours where the workers aren’t plowing the roads there’s other people out patrolling, sanding or salting as required,” Adams said.
Crews were out at 2 a.m. Tuesday clearing arterial collector streets and as of 8 a.m. they moved into residential and side streets.
Adams said with the snowfall the city is experiencing Tuesday they will need to re-evaluate the arterial collector streets, which should take place around noon.
“If we end up having to re-plow the streets then we will do that after lunch sometime,” he said.
“We will be out again at 2 a.m. cleaning up the streets in our arterial collector streets and resuming our residential areas after that.”
Local residents were also questioning why the city doesn’t use a road salt or pure salt mix other communities use.
Adams said when the city applies any winter control material on the streets they must be conscious of the road temperature.
“If the temperature is too low than putting salt out is not valuable at all. It’s a waste of a product,” he said.
“We have to be conscious and monitor the road surface temperature.”
During the snowfall Tuesday, crews put out products depending on the conditions the city experienced.
Adams added a straight salt product will be applied on the arterial collector streets during the current snowfall.
They pre-wet the product and treat it with a liquid calcium, so it bonds to the roadway and reacts quicker if the temperature drops.
“We will have to look at maybe putting more winter control sanding with the salt to give it more grip while the salt takes some time to work,” he said.
“We have to keep conscious of that and evaluate it to determine what the appropriate product to put on the road at the right time.”
Adams wants to remind people to be conscious of the calendar parking restrictions, because they ensure the roads have the opportunity to be cleared.
Calendar parking is critical in areas where housing units may not have driveways, so if people park on the road the plows are unable to clear the streets.
“If there’s parking on both sides of the road it restricts us and we might not physically be able to get through the street,” he said.
“It's very critical in those areas that we have people follow the parking restrictions.”
