A response to concerns about snow removal in Jasper

A resident who presented concerns regarding snow removal in Jasper at the budget information session on Jan. 8, has some good ideas, but they don’t work here, according to director of Environmental Services Ken Quackenbush.

“In different situations what he’s saying would make some sense,” Quackenbush said. The resident suggested putting a higher side on the dump trucks used, to allow for more snow to fit in the truck, but that would limit loading to one side.

“What we find is because the turnaround is so short between picking it up and dropping it off at the snow dump, the critical thing is keeping that loader busy as opposed to having less trucks or bigger trucks,” he said.

As well, the most efficient way to operate the loader is with a five-yard bucket, which would have to be reduced to a three-yard bucket with high boards on the trucks. “You’d be able to run with one less truck but you would slow down the whole operation because the loader is really the limiting factor there,” Quackenbush said.

And when it comes to contractors, they would want to be paid for modifications made to their trucks. “If we asked Jasper Concrete (the contractor) to put boards on their trucks, they’d want to be paid for that,” he said. 

“If they had to modify their trucks in any way, they would want a retainer to guarantee those trucks are available to us and not for some other work. I don’t think we could justify paying for that modification.”

When the snow does fly, the clearers have standards regarding response time based on determined road priorities. “We do our best to follow that, of course when you have successive snowfalls that happen before the initial clean-up, then those priorities get scrambled a little bit,” Quackenbush said.

This year, the department is using more staff to better meet those standards, he said. In addition to two full-time operators, members from the water crew also drive trucks to offer assistance.

The town has a general plan of attack. “Usually initially right after a big snow we’ll work around cars and get everything passable first and then go back and do an actual clean-up,” he said. 

“[Monday] for example, they [were] clearing the west end of Patricia Street, so they’re wind-rowing and picking it up, and we have to get into a couple of crescents that were low priority and haven’t been cleaned up at all yet. And we’ll probably move back onto Connaught Drive and clean up left turn lanes, things like that that are starting to creep in off the boulevards.”

Once the initial clean-up is done, man-power is reduced back to the town’s own crews and own equipment, so there is still work, but it gets done more slowly.

Though the presented suggestions may not be used, Quackenbush appreciates feedback. “It doesn’t hurt to always have ideas thrown about how you can do things better,” he said.