With winter fully upon us, Rocky View County Roads crews have been hard at work plowing and sanding to ensure safe roads for residents.
“I think the County looks after it quite well,” said Rocky View County Councilor Rolly Ashdown.
He said that complaints about unplowed or slippery roads have been down so far this winter.
“There’s the ordinary ones that happen on a regular basis,” said Ashdown.
The most common are complaints about windrows, the line of snow left behind by the plow blades. Since the county only provides plowing services, not actual snow removal, the windrows are an unavoidable nuisance.
“They run a line of snow in front of people’s driveways and its annoying…after you’ve just shoveled it out,” said Ashdown, “and I know that from experience.”
In his experience, county residents are generally understanding of windrows.
“Nobody wants their taxes to go crazy,” he said.
“Our snow budgets are generally pretty good,” said Ashdown.
Rocky View County plows roads in order of priority based upon four categories of roads.
Roads that have over 500 vehicles per day, known as arterial roads, are plowed first.
Collector roads, roads with 200-499 vehicles per day, are next followed by local roads which have less than 200 vehicles per day. Driveways that have been identified as medical emergency access routes are plowed with this category.
Finally, unmaintained road allowances that are used for agricultural purposes are plowed based on requests and the availability of equipment.
Following this order of priority, all county roads are plowed.
“The county [plows] all the streets,” he said.
Ashdown believes that each year the roads crews improve.
“They’re just getting better and better at it,” he said.
One thing that Ashdown recommends is that people avoid parking on the streets after a snow event to help crews plow the residential streets.
“That way they can get the snow out of the way,” he said.
Other than windrows, the other difficulty that crews have are cul-de-sacs.
Ashdown said that cul-de-sacs can be tough when the snow is only being plowed and not removed.
“You can’t really get any equipment in and out of a cul-de-sac,” said Ashdown, “Cul-de-sacs are a little bit tricky.”
The county’s snow control plan as well as a link to the road issue report form can be found at www.rockyview.ca/CountyServices/Roads/SnowControl.aspx.
