City of Calgary improves response time for major routes during winter operations

You may notice a few improvements on how The City of Calgary handles our priority routes this winter. Following Council’s recent direction to enhance snow clearing services, we have designed our winter operations program with the goal to improve response times on our highest priority roadways to 36 hours.

“These enhanced service levels mean that we’ll be completing our snow operations on priority routes faster to improve safety and mobility for Calgarians,” says Chris Hewitt, Manager of Mobility Maintenance. “Our goal is to keep those major routes moving safely during and after snowfall.”

These changes to The City’s priority snow plan will see major roads, and major community and transit routes (also known as Priority One and Two routes) completed in 36 hours, compared to the prior 48 hours of years past. While our routes are still prioritized based on traffic volumes, the quicker snow clearing response time allows a faster resumption of normal operations on many of our busiest streets and transit routes.

“We work to maintain good driving conditions on our major routes and want to provide a safe commute for all Calgarians,” says Hewitt. “We want to remind citizens that winter weather can happen at any time. Our crews work 24/7 through the winter months to ensure we can respond to the snow and ice.”

Council also invested in providing permanent funding for The City’s pedestrian clearing operations, including maintaining 24-hour response time on prioritized pathways, sidewalks bordering City-owned property, more than 1,300 high use transit stops and other pedestrian infrastructure.

The latter stages of the Snow Plan remain unchanged – following completion of snow clearing work after 36 hours, crews will continue to monitor major routes, move into residential areas to ensure they are safe and free of large ruts, respond to service requests and begin preparations for the next snow event.

Information on The City’s snow response, including information on changes to our Snow plan priorities can be found at Calgary.ca/snow.