Fredericton fights iciest winter in years

Fredericton road crews are busy pouring sand on city streets and sidewalks as workers try to fight back against an unusually slippery winter.

Mike Walker, manager of roadway operations for the City of Fredericton, said he has never seen city streets as icy and slick as this winter.

"It's definitely unusual," Walker said on Information Morning Fredericton on Monday.

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City crews have had to sand 250 kilometres of streets and sidewalks.

"Basically, every storm except one that I can think of this winter, has involved some type of freezing rain, rain or spike in temperature that's creating melting situations everywhere," he said.

 As soon as rain pours onto a snow pack, Walker said, it turns into a sheet of ice, which can be risky for vehicles and pedestrians.

That's where crews come in.

"Right then, we're chasing that," he said.

"We're applying sand to the top of it."

City crews use salt on priority one and priority two streets in the capital city.

Their service levels for each priority of street are:

• Bare pavement on priority one streets such as Regent, Smythe and the Westmorland Street Bridge.
• Bare centre strip on priority two streets such as MacLaren Avenue and Canterbury Drive.
• Snow-packed for priority three streets, which are usually in subdivisions, but sanding if they become slippery.

Crews use salt on seven kilometres of sidewalk in the downtown business district. The rest of the network is snow-packed and will be sanded when slippery. 

"In the downtown, we also remove snowbanks for future snow storage requirements, and access to businesses/parking, which helps in providing adequate drainage on the sidewalks," he said in an email. "This allows the salt to melt the snow/ice, drain, and not refreeze in place."

Salt, which melts snow and ice, is used to prevent bonding between pavement and snow and ice.

Walker said, sand has absolutely no melting capabilities. 

"If we get a rainstorm today and we apply sand tonight, once it's frozen, tomorrow if temperatures go up and it melts again then we have to be right back to square one," he said. 

Any change in weather can also be hard on equipment.

"When everything has become a sheet of ice, we have to drive on that ice to put the material down," he said. "We have to be very cautious when doing this work.

"We're driving on that ice before any of it is sanded so we have to take it slow.

"It's a very slow operation."

Walker said crews can be out sanding several days a week.

After last week's mixture of temperatures, crews were out Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

"We had to start fresh on each of those days," he said. 

"We'll take the snow."