Ask The City – Can You Plow the Gutters Downtown?

Your Question:

As a business owner downtown, I was wondering what it would take to get the gutters plowed after big storms. We often shovel our walks, but after parking customers have difficulty getting onto the sidewalk due to the extreme pile-up of snow on in the gutter. This making draining of water more difficult during the day, and as we all know, that leads to ice in the evenings. I know this isn't an easy fix, but please consider it as something to discuss formally.

Thanks,

The Pedal House Crew

The City's Response:

It’s usually not the big storms that cause the problem as we generally load and haul anything over about a foot of snowfall.  It’s the gradual build up from several smaller storms that causes most of the problems.  And as you are aware some of the business are quick to clear their sidewalks and others may take a couple of days.  There are times when we have cleared the gutters only to have a merchant then clear the sidewalks and block the normal flow of the gutter.

We apply Ice Slice along the curb lines early in the morning when we start to get a buildup.  If the buildup become excessive, then we come in and rip out the snow pack or ice and haul it.  If there is a substantial snow fall and the weather forecast indicates no warming for some time, we will windrow to the middle, load and haul.  We try to rip, or plow to the center on one or both of the 2 days we are allowed to tow cars so we can get into all the curbs.  We don’t always get all the ice because of parked cars.  Another contributing factor, but not to the Pedal House, is the melt water coming out of the alleys.  It flows out onto the street and then freezes in the shade of the buildings facing the streets.  The icing of the gutters is something we do watch for but with a couple of back to back snow storms or a couple of warm days melting the snow during the day, it can get ahead of us quickly.

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