The City of Montreal will launch its second snow loading operation of the winter season on Tuesday morning, in order to clear the streets of recent precipitation.
Posted at 1:53 p.m.
This is what the administration indicated in a brief press release on Monday, specifying that the districts can “start immediately” loading on reserved lanes, drop-off points as well as in school zones. Officially, however, the process will begin at 7 a.m. Tuesday.
For several days, snow has been accumulating along the side of the street due to light, but still successive, precipitation. Generally, a snow loading operation is triggered when the accumulation of snow on the ground reaches 10 to 15 centimeters, which is now the case.
“We already have 15 centimeters on the ground, and above all, he is announcing several more this week. It’s going to be a week like the last few days, with a little more flake every day,” says the City’s administrative spokesperson, Philippe Sabourin, in a telephone interview.
He claims that the measure is intended to be somewhat preventive. “If we had a storm coming, the picture would no longer be the same, so we have to collect even if there isn’t that much snow. And then, it still ends up accumulating and posing constraints on mobility,” insists Mr. Sabourin, promising “sustained” attention to sidewalks, in particular.
3,000 people and 2,500 snow removal vehicles will take part in the operation. Montreal’s municipal road network is approximately 10,000 kilometers long.
Montreal invites citizens to use the Info-Neige application or its website to find alternative parking spaces, and thus comply with parking bans on local streets. Each time, towing significantly slows down snow loading activities.
Some 8,060 spaces are available at night, between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m., across the metropolis. Citizens are also invited to clear the sidewalks of bulky items and leave garbage bags on their property.
In Quebec, the majority of cities simply clear the snow, pushing it to the side of the street or blowing it onto the ground. Denser, Montreal must remove the white powder using an army of trucks, an operation which turns out to be much longer and more expensive.
The first snow loading operation of the season was launched on December 10, when the metropolis was expecting significant amounts of rain. The priority was then to prevent the main arteries and sidewalks from being transformed into real ice rinks.
