Afternoon, evening commute expected to be messy

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VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – It seemed like a lot of people opted to work from home this morning, head into the office early or just took the day off because there appeared to be little traffic on the roads. However, crews with the City of Vancouver are warning things will look much different this afternoon.

With snow continuing to fall in many areas and the road conditions becoming icy or slushy, trucks will continue to salt and sand.

City of Vancouver General Manager of Engineering Services Jerry Dobrovolny says they’ll keep all 41 trucks running through the day and through the afternoon rush hour. “Later in the day if we see that the conditions improve a little bit, we can ramp down a little bit but at this point we’ll keep all 41 trucks out in the field for the entire day.”

He adds they’ve been using a salt and brine solution to ensure roads are safe and passable. “There is a point where we’ll begin to mix the salt with sand and if the temperature continues to drop then we switch to just sand. The sand provides traction and anti-slip.”

Dobrovolny is confident they have the resources to handle anything that comes their way. “We’ve stocked up. We’ve got very large both salt piles and sand piles that we’re drawing from. We put down 18 tonnes of salt in a night and 60,000 litres of brine, so we are going through very large quantities, but we’ve got very large stockpiles as well.”

Looking ahead to the weekend, he says they’ll keep as many trucks out on the roads. “The weekend travel becomes a little different than the Monday to Friday. We have different travel patterns than the regular weekday commute and so we’ll want to keep the main roadways, the bus routes and the truck routes clear and safe to travel.”

In terms of how much all this snow preparation is costing the city, Dobrovolny doesn’t know. “It will affect the budget. Our storm response plan is something we fund our contingency reserves as we do any year, but I don’t have numbers right now.”

He adds they’ll scale their response to the snow based on local forecasts.

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