City crews are working to clear priority roads in Lethbridge after heavy snowfall. Transportation manager Darwin Juell says crews have been working around the clock since Monday morning, with 12 hour shifts to get priority routes clear.
“Welcome back to winter after two weeks of beautiful chinook weather,” he says. “Unfortunately this is Lethbridge — it’s either beautiful and above zero or it’s cold and snowing and miserable. So we have got a week of this and we’ll get through it.”
The city declared phase one snow routes active on Feb. 20, but Juell says continued snowfall has delayed plowing the routes until tomorrow morning (Feb. 22). Residents who do not move their vehicle out of the parking lanes on the route will get ticketed for the first time since implementation of the snow routes.
“We have had three different snow events where we have declared and placed warning tickets on those 25 kilometres of roads. Now as of tomorrow morning, we will be placing tickets for those people that do not move their vehicle on the phase one plowing to the right,” Juell says.
Juell says only vehicles impeding plowing operations will be ticketed, but those parked on the street before the snow route is declared inactive are technically in violation of the parking ban. He adds there has not been a lot of feedback of the new routes so far, but he has had some residents request the city begin ticketing vehicles that do not move because they prevent plows from doing the job properly.
He says the residential route has been a success so far and the city will move ahead with implementing phase two next year and about 150 km of road will be affected.