Winnipeggers must clear their own windrows, city says

Keep those shovels ready this winter if you want to get past the windrows in your back alley, because the City of Winnipeg isn't going to clear them away.

During last year's heavily snow-laden winter,plowsleft behind hard-packed piles of snow and ice over a metre high in some back lanes.

• Homeowners face metre-high windrows after lanes plowed
• East Kildonan residents steamed over metre-high windrow

Following a number of complaints from residents, city administration looked into options for clearing away the alley mountains.

The city has some885 kilometresof back lanes and the current cost to clean them is about $250 per kilometre. The options it considered would either double that or soar the cost to$6,500per kilometre.

"Due to a large amount of snow and drifting snow, the amount of back lane clearing during the 2013-2014 winter was approximately 79 per cent more than is undertaken in a typical year," the report states.

"As the winter progressed, the amount of storage available to residents became constrained and as a consequence,many chose to push the windrowsout into the back lanes. The quantity of snow from residents
shedding windrows in this manner combined with new accumulations meant that subsequent plowing
operations created unusually high and often extremely dense windrows."

The city already provides one of the top snow and ice control programs in the country, providing services not offered in other citiessuch as clearing of front-drive windrows and plowing of sidewalks, said BradSacher, Winnipeg's director of public works.

But the alleys are "generally lined with various structures such as garages and fences, thereby limiting the room for equipment tomanoeuvre," the report states.

The city's current practice for back lane clearing is to do a single pass with a large front end loader. That reduces the probability of damage to private property during a clearing operation, the report states.

Administrators looked into the viability of using smaller equipment to remove windrows but that would "take a protracted amount of time to complete" and more than doublethe current cost.

Another option is to usesnow-blowingequipmentand semi-trucks tohaulthe material away. The process would take much longer than thecurrent method and increase the cost to$6,500perkilometre from $250perkilometre.

The city would also need to buy morespecialized equipment and it would take several years to get a return on the investment, the report states.

While it is not recommending any change to the policies, the city's administration willcontinue to seek out and participate in the research of innovative methods for removing windrows as new technologies develop in the future.