Saskatoon city council is to receive an update Monday on the plan to rid residential streets of snow piles left behind from the blizzard earlier this month.
The plan includes the removal of snow ridges and piles along roads, cul-de-sacs and intersections where drivability is impacted. However, snow piles on boulevards and medians along with vacant lots or open spaces will be left.
The work is scheduled to begin this week and, according to a city report, could take two months or longer to complete.
“Since neighbourhood snow removal is a more involved process, and something new for our city, it’s difficult to predict how much time it will take to move through the neighbourhoods,” said Terry Schmidt, the city’s general manager of transportation and construction.
“We should start to have an idea of the timeline as we move through the first neighbourhoods, and then we’ll begin estimating the schedule and posting it online.”
Undertaking the removal of this much snow is not coming cheap. The city predicts the cost will be between $6 million and $7 million on top of what has already been spent responding to the storm.
While the total cost of what the city calls a” historic response” is still unknown, the city is already expecting to exceed its 2020 snow and ice budget by $10 million.