Crews make a clean sweep of city roads

Have you finished your spring cleaning yet? After sweeping nearly 15,000 lane kilometres of roadway around the city, crews have successfully completed another Spring Clean-up program. This year, sweeping began April 3, and the final routes were completed last week.

Due to the timing of snowfall in winter, and colder temperatures in spring, City crews predicted in March that they would sweep up more winter sanding materials from Calgary’s roads this year. That prediction turned out to be correct. In total, crews swept up over 40,000 cubic metres of material, more than double the 18,000 cubic metres collected last spring.

According to Roads Maintenance Manager Bill Biensch, the increase in material collected is due to the increase in winter sanding material put on the roads.

“When we receive snowfall in colder temperatures, crews need to put a salt-gravel mixture on the roads to provide traction for vehicles. Making our roads safe in winter means putting down the right type and right amount of material. But to keep our roads safe throughout spring and summer, we need to pick that material up again,” said Biensch.

Spring Clean-up is an annual initiative to improve safety and mobility on Calgary roads. Removing sanding materials and debris from the roads also protects the environment by ensuring less material enters our river system.

“We would like to thank Calgarians for moving vehicles and bins from the road during sweeping this year so that crews could get the job done,” said Biensch. In some neighbourhoods, up to 90% of vehicles and bins were removed from the road. However, compliance was as low as 30% in other neighbourhoods, which means Calgarians may still be seeing gravel in those areas. Crews will be conducting re-sweeps where necessary over the next few months.

With Spring Clean-up now complete, crews will spend the summer working on filling potholes, maintaining boulevards, and repairing back lanes.

To find out more about other City of Calgary Roads Maintenance programs, visit calgary.ca/roads or contact 311.