The snow is here to stay in Prince George, and the city’s road-clearing crews are ready to go.
“Winter operations will normally see roughly 63 city staff in roads and 36 staff in fleet,” said Jordan Wiseman, City Manager of Roads and Fleet.
“Along with that the City has seven owned graters, six owned wheel loaders, eight plow trucks, four sidewalk machines, and one large snowblower for clearing out windrows.”
“It’s business as usual, we do have a reserve that is available to us if required,” Wiseman explained.
“We do our best to make sure we don’t require that, but the funds would be there if required.”
The City has roughly 210 kilometres of sidewalks, along with roughly 1,500 lane kilometres of road to clear.
“The priority roads would be considered arterials and collectors,” Wiseman explained.
“That would be roads like Massey, Foothills, Ospika, Westwood, 15th Avenue, Fifth, Queensway, just main through fares like that to get people where they’re going and off onto the side street.”
Wiseman added the priority threshold would be 7.5 centimetres of snow falling.
“A full hands-on-deck with a compliment of contractors would be 120 millimetres or 12 centimetres,” he explained.
“That would be considered a full-on snow event and priority threes would be cleared as well, priority threes being your residential areas and lower volume and lower speed areas as well.”
Wiseman said from October 2022 to March 2023, city crews moved approximately 24,000 truckloads of snow, or roughly 462,000 cubic metres to their snow dumps.
He said it’s up to mother nature if they’re going to have to haul more this year.
“Going through the Farmer’s Almanac and just reading what we have available to us, I’m not anticipating a very heavy winter,” Wiseman said.
“Probably a little bit warmer than usual, a little bit wetter, but mother nature has the final say and we will see what happens as we get closer to December and January.”
Prince George residents are asked to report any icy sidewalks by calling 3-1-1.
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