Winter Snow Pilot Frequently Asked Questions
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Winter Snow Pilot Frequently Asked Questions The City of Fernie conducted a Facebook Q&A session on Tuesday, January 12, 2021 from 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm The following summarizes questions and answers from that session, including answers to questions we were unable to address in the time allotted. Questions and answers have been grouped by theme and truncated and/or edited for clarity and to avoid duplication. For more information, please go to https://letstalk.fernie.ca Contents - clicking on the links below will take you to the associated page in the document Purpose Process Bylaw Enforcement Resources and Staffing Schools Laneways Sidewalks Fire Hydrants Drainage Windrow Clearing Program Community Feedback 1 | Page Purpose Why is the City doing this? • The previous way of managing snow throughout the City was unsustainable. • Plowing snow to the current level is resource intensive and costly. We rely heavily on volunteer overtime to get the job done. This is not just expensive, but also increases safety related incidents, results in equipment damage, and takes staff away from other important work and results in deferred maintenance in all seasons. • The pilot is intended to provide a standardized service response that is consistent and fair WITHIN CURRENT RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS. • The pilot is allowing us to gather the data required to make defensible and transparent decisions around resources and snow management budgeting, and we are committed to gathering that data over the course of the entire winter season. The City had been doing a great job up until now. Why fix what isn’t broken? • While some areas of the City may have experienced high levels of service, we were not consistently plowing access to critical infrastructure, emergency services, etc., a situation which sometimes lasted for several days. We are now able to consistently clear access to critical infrastructure, schools and other P1 and P2 areas on day 1 after a snowfall. However, the trade-off may be a delay in the service to your street. • The previous system costs us in hours of lost maintenance in other areas. This is the worst I’ve seen it in 25 years, and we haven’t had very much snow this year! Is this really worth it? • The City had no choice but to take action: the previous way encroached on our ability to maintain infrastructure year round, led to higher numbers of safety incidents, and was inconsistent across the community. • The pilot is allowing us to gather important data so that our policy decisions – including decisions around resources and budgeting – are informed, transparent, and defensible. Has the budget for snow clearing been cut over the years? What do you really mean by “unsustainable”? • Great question. No, the budget has not been cut over the years, but the service area hasn’t been reviewed in over two decades – and our community has grown and changed in those 20 years. When we say “unsustainable”, we mean that we do not actually have the resources to deliver what the community expects today or in the future. You may have been happy with the snow clearing service you were experiencing, but the trade off was that the City was unable to clear access to critical infrastructure, delaying routine maintenance and driving costs up in other areas. • We have also routinely relied on our streets team volunteering to work overtime every time it snowed. Fernie gets a lot of snow! This practice led to an increase in safety related accidents, a poor work-life balance for team members, inconsistent service on weekends and holidays, and diminishing resource availability over the rest of the year, resulting in deferred maintenance and increased costs on roads, water, and sewer service areas in other seasons. Has the City employed a professional consulting company to come up with a real snow management plan? • The work of local government is reviewing the services we provide, engaging the community for their feedback and testing alternatives. The current system hasn’t been reviewed in over 20 years, and this pilot project is the opportunity to gather the necessary information to make informed, data-driven recommendations to Council. 2 | Page Process Why loop through 2 or 3 times before clearing the whole road? Do it right the first time! • Thanks to feedback from the community and our Streets team, we are pivoting to curb-to-curb service. Our switch to curb-to-curb will clear driving lanes and parking lanes on the first pass. However, while the quality of service will increase, there will be a delay in service, and we encourage residents to provide feedback and their views on this change. The roads will keep narrowing over the course of the winter. This is a fail! • Our pivot to curb-to-curb will alleviate this concern about the narrowing of driving lanes. Please continue to provide your feedback on this change in service. We have had no back-to-back snow events since this pilot project started last year so you have no data as to how this is going to be when it does happen. • We have had significant rain-on-snow events – major snowfalls where the temperature remains below zero are significantly more straightforward to address. This pilot is part of establishing a baseline and improving services from there with additional resources. There are plenty of efficient snow clearing plans around the country. Why is Fernie having such a challenge? • We are moving to curb-to-curb for the next few major snowfalls to determine if this approach will improve service without becoming too slow in terms of opening up critical travel corridors. We appreciate the multiple passes and narrow driving lanes have been a big concern. • The pilot project aligns with standard practices of prioritizing roads. Why can Sparwood clear their snow effectively and we can’t? • Sparwood has a few factors that help contribute to their snow management response that Fernie does not: it is a relatively new community (1960s) and has not had to had to invest in snow removal at the expense of maintaining other critical infrastructure. Second, Sparwood has no on-street parking in the winter, which enables a clean and efficient curb-to-curb response. How does sending crews out in spring to fix the damage done to boulevards and yards save money? • Thanks for your question. The City operators do not intentionally damage boulevards while clearing snow. However, on occasion, this does happen. This is most prevalent in areas where there is no curb and gutter to mark the edge of the parking lanes. When this occurs, we make sure to repair the boulevard with dirt and seed in the spring. On average we repair 15 - 25 patches of grass in the spring annually. Why are windrows created on both sides of the street in areas where there are driveways/houses on only one side? • The pilot focused on delivering a standardized approach to clearing snow across the community. That meant split plowing all roads outside of the downtown core. We are continuing to reassess our approach during the pilot and this has been an area that has been identified, especially in areas where there is no development or no pedestrian access maintained to things like bus stops, trailheads, winter maintained parks, and sidewalks. Why is 2nd Avenue the only area being centre plowed? 3 | Page • The right of way in the downtown core is entirely built-out with infrastructure, right up to private property lines. As a result, there is nowhere to store snow. Centre plowing and hauling snow is costly and in all other areas of the community there is an available road right-of-way that is intended for snow storage. Previous practices of centre plowing in other areas drove costs for hauling snow and relied on significant overtime costs, resulting in deferred maintenance in other service areas. Your snow management seems to be just moving snow around? But not taking it away? • Our roads are constructed to maintain adequate right-of-way in order to store snow on the boulevard once it’s been split plowed. We remove snow from the downtown core because there is no City-owned right-of-way to accommodate snow storage. • The boulevard is the grassy area between the driving and parking lanes and the sidewalk. This falls within the City right-of-way. I live in the Cedars. Roads are cleared using the sand truck with the belly plow. Although there are two passes the road is barely wide enough for one car. Would it be possible to use the front-end loader with the sidearm plow regularly? • The Cedars is included in the pilot as a P4 and intended to be widened in priority order. Areas like Montane and the Cedars sometimes have delayed plowing if construction equipment impedes larger plowing equipment. Our pivot to curb-to-curb should yield improvements in these areas. Why doesn’t the City clear a path through James White Park? • While the City does not currently allocate resources to clearing James White Park, we do groom trails, the south parking lot, and access to the washrooms and staging area. Your feedback will be included in the evaluation of the pilot program and in recommendations for future policy. Why is the grader running around town with the blade up? • We are striving to deliver snow clearing services in priority order. This means that equipment will lift their blade through residential areas to get to the high priority routes. For more information on the proposed prioritization framework visit https://letstalk.fernie.ca and check out the Winter Snow page – don’t forget to register to have your say.