City crews racing to clear major routes in Calgary ahead of Tuesday's commute

City crews continue to clean up after a snowstorm dumped heaps of snow on Calgary over Christmas, but they're hopeful that major routes will be cleared by Tuesday.

"The snow stopped falling on Christmas dayand that activates our seven-day snow plan," said Chris McGeachy, spokesperson for the roads department.

"Right now we're moving into day two of the snow plan, which means we're doing the priority two routes, and that would be your 14th Street type roads."

Once those roads are clear, and that will depend on whether or not more snow falls, the city will move on to residential roads, bus shelters and collector roads.

"We had up to 100 employees working over the holidays, so a lot of people actually gave up their time to go and make sure the roads were safe for everyone, and we expect that a lot of the major routes will be completed by tomorrow's commute," said McGeachy.

$2 million

According to Environment Canada, 16 centimetres fell at the Calgary airport from Dec. 24 to Dec. 25.

McGeachy said the department doesn't have exact figures on how much money was spent to deal with the heavy snowfall so far, but that $2 million would not be a bad guess.

Coun. Ward Sutherland said that number is about right.

"We have retainers with outside contractors, so they hired an additional 15 scrapers and 10 more sanders, so the combination of everything is basically about $1.5 million and then there was $500,000 spent on snow removal, which we don't normally do, but there were some trouble areas that had to get done, so they decided to go for it with that," he said.

Sutherland said the city is still under budget for the year when it comes to snow and ice control.

Calgarians can check on the status of roads and see the location of plows here.

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