Sudbury residents sound off over snow removal

Sudbury city councillors say they are still getting complaints about snow removal in the city.

Councillor Robert Kirwan said people are calling him, complaining that plows are pushing massive piles of snow onto side streets.

"Major roads are being plowed, but they're leaving quite a pile of snow at the intersection — and it's causing some difficulty getting onto a road like Regional Road 80, where the speed limit can be 80 kilometres in some places," he said.

The city's manager of infrastructure services said plows follow certain routes designed for them. To pull them off of that route to do specific side streets, he said, could lead to slow downs and additional costs.

Tony Cecutti noted staff get side streets plowed as quickly as possible.

"A lot of these storms seem to be happening overnight, so people are waking up to a street that hasn't been plowed yet," he said.

"That's just the reality of the time of when the snow is occurring, versus when we're able to get to those streets."

Cecutti said there are 40 snowplows and five to 15 smaller vehicles that are used to clear Sudbury roads.

Plowing app? 

For those interested in keeping track of where those plows are at any given time, there may soon be an app — or something similar — for that.

The city currently uses GPS technology to track its snowplows, and it's working on making that online system available for residents.

"We're confident that we'll be able to have a system in place for next winter for general public viewing," Cecutti said.

"We've found some parts of the tool to be working really well. [But] … with a large number of vehicles and such a large amount of data in a short piece of time, we're also finding some things we need to do to enhance the way it's working."