On the heels of a national forecast warning of an impending “classic” Canadian winter, the City of Toronto is assuring residents that it is ready for whatever the season “has to throw at us.”
As part of the city’s $90 million plan, more than 1,500 personnel are on standby to man a fleet of 1600 snowplows, 300 sidewalk plows and 200 salt trucks once snow dusts Toronto’s 56,000 kilometres of road.
“The city has a multi-pronged plan to tackle winter with a wide range of equipment and applications to combat various stages of snow and ice. Whether it’s applying salt brine to expected freezing, salting our roads, adding beet juice to improve the salts effectiveness in extremely cold temperatures or plowing roads and sidewalks – there’s a plan,” Public Works and Infrastructure Chair Jaye Robinson said Wednesday.
Robinson nodded to the recent reports from The Weather Network forecasters about a stormy winter season as a reason residents should start their preparations now.
According to their chief meteorologist, Chris Scott, the weather system headed our way appears similar to that of 2007-2008 when Toronto recorded its snowiest winter ever.
Robinson said the public has numerous ways to keep track of winter road conditions when snow falls.
Back in 2015, the city installed GPS systems on each of its salters and plows to help residents track when and what roads crews have cleaned.
That location-based information is fed back to PlowTO, a real-time online map which allows the public to track the progress of the city’s winter crews during snowfall.
“Our plows and trucks are equipped with GPS that allows residents to track which roads have been plowed and or salted,” she said. “The plow to map is colour coded to tell you when the road is serviced.”
While city preparedness is important, Robinson acknowledged that residents and property owners all “have a role to play” during the season.
The city will clear sidewalks where possible, but in the central part of the city, residents and property owners are responsible for ensuring the safety of the sidewalks for themselves and others.
Residential sidewalks are expected to be cleared within 12 hours of a snowfall but are prohibited from pushing the snow piles back onto the road, Robinson said. Those who fail to do so may face a fine.
“Consider helping neighbours who physically may not be able to clear their own property,” she said. “Sidewalks may be slippery and this may cause people to fall and hurt themselves, particularly our most vulnerable residents.”
New to the city’s winter maintenance capabilities this year will be completion of the York-Bay-Yonge Ramp.
Robinson said that for the first time, the ramp, which opens in January, will be equipped with an automated deicing system.
“It allows our staff to simply hit a button from a remote location to fully deice the ramp,” she said. “As this process has always been done in the past manually by salting crews, this will be the very first time we use this technology in this manner, where it’s embedded in our infrastructure.”
The city has also put aside $2.1 billion dollars over the next 10 years to repair watermains, which will be monitored during quick swings in temperatures.
“We’re ready to go this year. We know it’s going to be an interesting and challenging winter,” Barbara Gray, Toronto’s director of transportation, told CP24. “We know that the people in Toronto are interested in having a quick and efficient and thorough response so we’re ready to go.”
