Frustrated with snow removal

Parents dropping students off at Quigley elementary, Wednesday morning, were surprised to find Kitch Road in Rutland wasn’t adequately plowed.

Lori Dickson took her child to school, after the two day break due to inclement weather, and tells Castanet Kitch Road had just one lane of access.

“It was really difficult for the cars to get past each other and then you had parents walking their children to school, and couldn’t get out of the roads or whatever,” says Dickson, who adds there were a few cars that became stuck on the road.

Photo: Jennifer Zielinski

The street apparently missed being plowed at night by a city driver, who may not have known it was a priority two school access street.

Larry Paul with School District 23 says he was notified about the issue first thing in the morning and made a call to the City to rectify the problem.

However, Paul points out that even if the road had been plowed there is still an issue in the Rutland area.

“The issue is the lack of sidewalks, so it does make it difficult for the kids to get to school because there are no sidewalks to clear to allow them to walk down, so a lot of kids had to walk down the road. Not being plowed just added to the safety issue.”

Other issues arose for pedestrians along Rutland Road, where no sidewalks were shovelled and only small awkward pathways were created.

Castanet spoke with several people waiting for buses to find out about their morning walk.

Two women said it was hard to walk along the makeshift path, while one elderly woman explained she fell while trying to make her way along the sidewalk.

Shovelling sidewalks are the residents or business owners responsibility, however Stephen Bryans the Roadways Operations Supervisor with the city says crews are trying to help lessen the load.

“At this time, with this amount of snow we are out trying to help out as well,” he says. “We have our own properties that we are adhere to those bylaws, so we are out doing those as well as sidewalks everywhere. Simply because trucks do plow in this amount of slush and snow we can’t expect the public to do them all.”

The city is now working to clear priority three neighbourhoods and cul-de-sacs but the immense snow fall accumulated over the last couple of days has put crews behind.

“It’s tough,” says Bryans. “Especially because we are into our fourth day of double shifting of going 12-hours, after 12-hours, after 12-hours, but they are doing very well and we are slowly getting there.”

By the end of Wednesday the city expects most residents to be able to access their local roads, however, as far as total clean up that will take time.