People won’t be able to park on certain roads in Grande Prairie this week. A parking ban will be in place starting on November 6th to allow snow plows to clean up after 11 centimetres fell over the weekend. Transportation Services Manager Robert Carroll says the ban will allow crews to have better access to the roads.
“They are starting tomorrow on our permanent snow routes and our permanent snow routes are priority one and priority two roads. There will be no parking on those roads from 7 am to 9 pm. This will allow us to get in and properly clear the roads.”
Priority one roads are the main roads that lead through the city like 100 Avenue and 68 Avenue and priority two roads are mostly bus and transit routes. Carroll says crews have been working since Friday and he expects them to spend the rest of the day on Monday working on those main roads.
He then plans to move on to priority two roads by tonight and have the downtown core cleaned up overnight. There is no word yet on if or when residential neighbourhoods may be plowed but Carroll says that because this is the first snowfall he may wait.
“We’re still assessing whether we want to go into residential yet with the first snowfall of the year, we may want to wait till we get some more snow because it’s compacted quite well in our residential areas and we’re not expecting any snow in the near forecast.”
Depending on the snowfall amount, Carroll says it usually takes five to eight days to clear the snow from the roads. Because of that, the parking bans are expected to last until the end of the week.
