Regina faces complaints as policy, budget limit residential snow plowing

A lot of people in Regina are frustrated with snow clearing, especially when it comes to residential streets that aren’t getting plowed.

Chris Warren, the City of Regina’s director of roadways and transportation, said crews are doing the best they can with the budget and resources they have.

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“We can understand and agree that there have been some service requests around the condition of residential roads,” said Warren.

“What happened there is we had two snowfalls around 10 and 12 centimetres – roughly 4 to 5 inches – each, so at the time it did not trigger a full residential plow.”

Part of the issue, Warren explained, has to do with snow ridges. He said that if crews were to plow all the residential streets, it would create large snow ridges in parking lanes and in front of homes.

“The current policy allows for those snow ridges to be placed in the parking lanes when plowing residential roads and then to remain in the parking lane for the remainder of the season,” he said.

“With our current policy and our current budget, we typically would not remove snow ridges on residential roads.”

Warren explained the current winter maintenance policy was approved by the previous city council, and has a list of objectives and outcomes around snow clearing and snow maintenance.

However, as per the policy, residential roads are only plowed if there is a snow event that sees 15 centimetres or more of snow fall on the city.

With the recent freeze-and-thaw cycle in the city, Warren said crews have been trying to level off the ruts on residential roads in a bid to avoid creating a snow ridges in parking lanes.

“We’re trying to minimize those snow ridges, because once we create those snow ridges, then we’re dealing with circumstances where residents sometimes wish that those snow ridges could be removed,” said Warren.

“Our goal is to shave the road, shave the ice, make them smooth, and make them level while also minimizing any snow ridges so people can still park in front of their homes.”

The city’s 2024 budget for snow clearing is $10.6 million, and up to November $7.7 million had been spent.

Clearing the snow ridges on residential streets just once could cost as much as $10 million, nearly the entire snow-clearing budget for the year.

With the recent freeze-and-thaw cycle in the city, roadways director Chris Warren said crews have been trying to level off the ruts on residential roads in a bid to avoid creating a snow ridges in parking lanes. (980 CJME file photo)

“We brought a report to city council in 2023, I believe, with some options to consider around enhancing our service levels, and we had an option there for snow ridge removal,” Warren explained.

“At that time, city council did not approve any changes to the policy so, in essence, there are no provisions in the winter maintenance policy for snow ridge removal on residential roads, and therefore there wouldn’t be any budget available for that as well.”

Warren said the city acknowledges and understands that there are some challenges people are dealing with when it comes to the roads, and said they are doing the best they can in alignment with the current winter maintenance policy and the available budget.

“We can appreciate sometimes it takes a little bit longer to get things done but, you know, we’re really trying to adhere to those objectives and the winter maintenance policy,” he said.

980 CJME asked Warren if a bigger budget would see roads cleared faster, or residential roads plowed more often.

“If the city just wanted to enhance the service levels of the winter maintenance policy (to) do things faster, do things quicker, do more than we currently do, the typical result will be additional budget and resources required,” replied Warren.

“So yes, if the city ended up wanting to enhance levels of service, then the result would be additional budget required, and that would be something we would work with city council on in the future, if that were the case.”

He said administration will be updating the new council in the fall to bring the councillors up to speed on snow clearing from the previous winter. If there are opportunities to enhance the winter maintenance policy or budget, it would happen at that time.

“In some cases, it may require purchasing new equipment and hiring additional labor,” Warren said. “In other cases, it may be hiring additional contractors to complete that work.”

GPS snow plow tracking could roll out to residents in the future

You might be able to track snow plows in the city in the near future.

The City of Regina already has GPS trackers installed on its snow-removal equipment, but Warren said that data is only being used internally “to ensure that we’re maximizing efficiency with our routing, ensuring the safety of our employees so we know (where) everyone is at any given time, and for assigning locations to our people in the field.”

But, Warren noted, the city is working to expand access to the GPS trackers on snow-clearing equipment in the future.

“Some of the thoughts around that are trying to give the public some real-time opportunity to see what streets have been plowed and what streets are in the queue,” he said.

“That’s one of the ways in which we’re really trying to enhance that, so people can see when a road has been plowed and when they might be able to expect their road to be plowed as well.”

Warren said there’s no timeline on the books yet, as the city is still ironing out the details.

“We’re working with our technology people at the city here, and once we have some more information we would definitely want to be  sharing that,” he said.