(City of Prince Albert website)

By Susan McNeil

Snow update

Snow clearing continues by priority in Prince Albert

Feb 15, 2025 | 12:00 PM

As drivers in Prince Albert tackle snow and ice on their travels around town, the roads department is reminding people that it clears streets by priority.

Mohammad Kraishan, Operations manager City of Prince Albert, said some roads will always be done first.

“We do have a priority system here for snow clearing and ice control. So we have priority one that includes major arterial roads and emergency routes,” he said.

That includes 15th Street, 2nd Avenue, 6th Avenue and Marquis Road and the emergency routes are 4th and 6th Avenues West along with 1st Avenue.

Second priority are streets that serve as collector roads, city bus routes and school zones.

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The third priority is the central business district and residential streets are last. Residential streets were last done in January.

After the most recent snowfall, they have finished all the first priority and are close to finishing Priority 2 streets.

Residents that have specific complaints can report them online and staff will then investigate and see if the concern needs to be dealt with right away.

In order to save time and money, several years ago the city modified its snow clearing policy so they could leave piles of snow on the boulevards and part of the sidewalk.

“When we do residential streets specifically, we’ll leave windrows along the street,” said Kaishan.

They will still keep the sidewalks free of snow but they modify their practice in times of need.

“During significant snow falls, what you’ll notice out there is that a small portion of the sidewalk will be covered by the windrow,” he said.

The policy allows them to cover only up to 1/3 of the sidewalk. This season there has been more snow, so this policy has been used several times.

How ice is dealt with changes depending on temperatures.

“This week and last week the temperature has been very, very low,” Kaishan said.

When the mercury hits –15 or colder, the salt doesn’t work so they switch to sand.The sand provides traction but does not melt snow like salt does.

Sanding trucks are out daily and focus on intersections and major streets or any icy sections.

The city maintains several snow dumps to haul the snow to and even with higher snowfall this year there is enough room to accommodate all the snow.

Budgeting for snow removal is a tricky process as when the budget is set, no one knows how much snow will fall and the budget season and snow season do not coincide.

In order to balance it out, the city has a snow reserve that it draws from on busy years and puts into in slower years.

Several years ago, there were consecutive heavy snowfall years which led the city to increase the amount it has available for operations. It now sits at $1.7 million.

“That’s gone up quite significantly over the last 10 years,” he said and attributed that to different budgeting and increased costs of operating machines and paying people.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com