Winter storm no match for City staff
Posted Dec 21, 2011 01:24:53 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The first winter storm of the season is no match for the City of Ottawa’s fleet of salt spreaders and sidewalk machines.
170 massive salt trucks took to the city’s streets around 2 a.m. and City Roads Manager, Jason Staniforth, told 1310News there is a priority system set up to keep the busiest roads as safe as possible.
“It’s based on traffic volumes and arterial collector roads and then we move sort of down into bus routes and then into residential roadways,” he said. “So everything has its own classification and we start at the highets classification first and basically work our way down through the classes until we finish up.”
He said the same thing goes for the 120 sidewalk salt spreaders.
The trucks use pure salt for freezing rain and salt and grit mixes for snow when extra traction is key. Staniforth says with workers ready to pull 12 hour shifts and trucks kept up with daily maintenance, it would take a real blizzard to throw the City’s road crews off their game.
