Good news!

I agree that this is good news, and a long time in coming. Especially for 16 West.

Better late than never.

Wahoo, from a road warrier. In the course of the winter, I log about 20,000 km thru November to March.

This change will likely result in at least 50% improvement on winter driving conditions.

Thank you, Thank you, thank you.

Bravo! Now if you could please divide all 4 lane areas of the Cariboo Connector. Winter driving doesn’t bother me at all. The fear of an oncoming, driving to fast for their skill level or conditions, spinning into my lane however does concern me.

So does this improvement of the snow removal on our highways, mean that the BC Government is acknowledging their fault for failing to provide Northerners with the same quality of highway driving condition to the lower half of the province. Where does this leave the province in the realm of negligence.

Never heard of Highways being on a class level. I would assume all highways in the Southern Interior and Lower Mainland have always been Class A. Anyways its good news for these two important corridors for our area.

Now, how do we apply this to the City?

1. Where is the consistent classification of municipal roads associated with different levels of maintenance in this province?

2. What standard, if any, do we meet with respect to other cities in BC and elsewhere in Canada?

3. What should maximum accumulations be for municipal road classifications?

4. What should be the time frame for which the work must be completed?

I know this might be difficult to comprehend for City staff and even some councillors as well as the Mayor, but this is what needs to be done and communicated to the citizens and inspected for compliance.

“Never heard of Highways being on a class level. I would assume all highways in the Southern Interior and Lower Mainland have always been Class A”

I am sure they have not. There are many more “highways” there than just the TransCanada and they are most certainly not all built nor maintained to that standard.

As far as the city goes, they should put the whole snow removal out to bid, and see what a contractor will price it out at.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the savings exceeds a million dollars.

Our city spending is out of control. They are living in a different world, mayor, management, and senior employees have built a shield around themselves and they are spending our money with no recourse.

They blame a lot of things on the weather, but weather happens every day. It did thirty years ago, and it will happen thirty years from now. The difference is, we can predict snow falls more accurately than thirty years ago. use the technology, have scheduling built around this ever changing conditions. Contractors have too.

We have a Provincial hiway running thru the middle of our town. That is a huge relief for the citizens.

What do we want, Crews moving the snow before it hits 10 cm on the major routes.

– remainder of first avenue, Carney, fifth Ave, tenth ave, fifteenth, twentieth, Queensway, Ospika, Tabor, Foothills, Domano, Simon Fraser, highland, Austin.

– Bus routes

– Downtown

– Than start hitting the residential.

I think most of the citizens wants to see the main roads cleared, and if it has not snowed for 6 – 10 days, I think it is a reasonable expectation than most of the residential areas do get plowed out, getting ready for the next snow.

Only when we are getting hit hard with snow should we paying overtime to keep the major routes open.

Great news i travel these hiways alot. 97 north hasnt been that bad this year. What has been bad is people who think they can drive way over the speed limit and pass in snow storms.

Great news i travel these hiways alot. 97 north hasnt been that bad this year. What has been bad is people who think they can drive way over the speed limit and pass in snow storms.

He spoke, would the contractors get a retainer to sit on their asses between snow storms?

Now the contractors can look forward to increased revenue which will bring our hwy’s maintenance up to how it should have been all along.

… would the contractors get a retainer to sit on their asses between snow storms?

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Ideally, the workers would have two wages; one for sitting around waiting (cleaning their vehicles, etc.) and a second (larger one!) for when they’re out there busting their butts to get the streets cleaned in a timely manner.

Its not the employees its about having the ability to manage, work crews take orders and this city management not interested in hearing from those performing the job or from the public. Its incompetence at the top,

As a first responder who drives these roads frequently, that is unbelievably good news to me!

seamut wrote: “…would the contractors get a retainer to sit on their asses between snow storms?”

Sort of like firemen between fires?

My summer job at a paper mill was on he crew that changed the rolls on which paper was threaded. In addition, we took care of any breaks in the paper being fed to the end roll.

So, we sat on our asses more often than not. I read my university text books, the others read their sports and girlie magazines.

Very few jobs run steadily. Sometimes there is no one at the front counter, other times there are 10 people lining up for service.

It seems that the fundamental problem with City snow clearing may start right there; they seem to be trying to have a steady workload when it is impossible to do that and provide excellent service at the same time.

Williams Lake is using a de-icer using beets, and they anyone that I’ve talked to that have driven on it say that it works really well. But it does have an odd smell.

It doesn’t damage the cars as salt does and it doesn’t damage the pavement like the stuff we use in PG. It is also used in Quebec and Ont were they stopped using the stuff we use in PG because it was causing pot holes and the breakdown of the pavement.

I can’t believe that these highways are only now being classified as Class A highways. Why weren’t they before?

I can’t believe that they actually used the two words, roads and maintained in the same sentence… My response to that would be WHAT??? I don’t think I even know what maintained roads look like…I have spent all winter season trying to keep my vehicle from bouncing into the ditch or into on-coming traffic and they wonder why there have been an alarming amount of accidents lately… don’t bounce anywhere when it’s May now do we???

So firemen don’t do anything between fires? That will come as a surprise to them.

He spoke, so contractor’s are surper men, no coffee breaks, no lunch breaks, no sleep, do not have to abide by provincial or federal labour laws. Will work for peanuts and say yes bossman all day.

Oh what happens if the contractor goes over budget? I always get a kick out of private contractors being the answer to everything. Hasn’t been my experiance.

I agree seamut t, people think having a bunch of low paid green contractors ,with high staff turnover and driving junk is going to solve all the snow and ice problems. Be careful what you wish for.

You can designate Class A, B or C all you want, until people take responsibility for their driving nothing will change!

Well put, construction mom, and very true.
metalman.

graymare it is a mixture of beet juice and calcium chloride. Beet juice is fine, calcium chloride not so much.