New snow removal pilot project in Winnipeg

The city of Winnipeg announced a new pilot project as part of the preliminary budget for 2025, that will require 15 centimeters of snow before sending plows to clear residential streets.

“I want to be clear that we have not changed the service standard for snow clearing permanently, this is a pilot project,” said Scott Gillingham, Mayor of Winnipeg.

The city currently spends about 30-40 million dollars on snow removal and ice control annually and are hopeful this pilot project will help reduce costs.
Currently, the requirement to send snowplows to clear residential streets is 10 centimeters, and Winnipeg residents CityNews spoke to had mix reactions to this change.

“I actually don’t think it’s going to make much of a difference and I feel that the city has to save money somehow, so for one year I think it’s a good idea that we try it out,” said Marie Skelton, Resident of Winnipeg.

“This crescent gets pretty bad when there’s a heavy snowfall, especially with the blowing snow right in front of this driveway and that driveway usually is a huge amount of snow and it ends up having to shovel out a couple of people before I can get out of the garage or anything but I think it’s probably not the best thing for residential streets to wait that long to remove snow,” said Saiyed Iman, Resident of Winnipeg.

This pilot project will also affect those who commute by biking or walking to work.
Executive Director of Bike Winnipeg, Mark Cohoe, voiced his concerns about how the extra five centimeters will disturb biking routes.

“If your on a bike that’s a pretty big difference, that’s 50% difference sort of on that first part and last part of your route and it’s going to be especially bad where there’s parked cars or maybe you’re in an out of traffic because it’s really going to build up in those locations,” said Cohoe.

Following the completion of the pilot project, the city will reassess the savings and look at next steps of identifying changes to the policy.