(Montreal) According to Executive Committee member Maja Vodanovic, the next winter season will cost the city of Montreal almost 200 million.
Posted at 6:23 am
Morgan Lowrie The Canadian Press
An army of workers will have to grit, plow and clear snow from around 10,000 kilometers of Montreal streets, as well as sidewalks and certain bike paths, with various abrasives this winter.
In early November, Mayor Valérie Plante cited the rising cost of snow removal — up to 100% year-over-year in some districts — as one of the reasons she had to increase property taxes by an average of 4.9% in 2024.
In an interview with The Canadian Press, Ms. Vodanovic, who is also mayor of Lachine County, said the total snow budget this year is estimated at 197 million, which is about 10 million more than last year. She blamed the increase on high inflation, labor shortages and climate change.
“Unfortunately, many of our contracts are increasing with interest rates and shortages [de main-d’œuvre] and especially truckers,” she noted, many of whom are in their 60s.
According to the district mayor, the cost of snow removal vehicles has exploded in recent years due to supply chain disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, where many parts were manufactured.
And while some may think that warmer winters caused by climate change would reduce costs, there are other challenges. Montreal experiences more frequent freeze-thaw cycles, requiring the country to intervene more frequently to prevent clogged pipes and dangerous ice.
Heavy snowfall used to occur between November and March, but now it is concentrated in January and February. The result is that snow removal companies are running all of their machines at the same time for a shorter period of time, hiring more people and forcing them to work overtime.
Costs are also rising in other Canadian cities.
Edmonton says the snow removal budget is growing every year and will reach up to $68.5 million by 2026. Val Dacyk, the city’s general overseer of field infrastructure operations, attributes these costs in part to climate change, particularly hot temperatures that lead to slush and flooding.
Winnipeg budgeted $36.26 million for fiscal year 2023, up from $34.7 million in 2022, although actual snow removal costs were higher, including $87.18 million in 2022.
The budget for winter maintenance in Mississauga, near Toronto, was increased by $1.1 million to $26.82 million for fiscal year 2023.
Even in Vancouver, with its much less harsh climate, costs have risen steadily, from 3.8 million in 2018 to 7.4 million in 2022, during which time the amount of snow the city receives has also increased.
Toronto said its 2024 winter maintenance budget of more than $100 million per year is still in development but will be “higher than 2023” due to “increasing costs of equipment, labor and general market conditions.”
No other city in Canada spends as much on snow as Montreal. “Not only is the city the snowiest major city in North America, but the downtown area is dense, meaning there is little room for snow and it is too cold to melt it,” said Maja Vodanovic. These conditions force the city to perform complex snow removal operations several times a year, which include towing cars, clearing the snow in the middle of the street, loading it into trucks, and transporting it to one of the 20 largest landfills, according to estimates in recent years around 1 million per centimeter of snow removed.
Jean-Philippe Meloche, an assistant professor of urban planning at the University of Montreal, says managing the snowfall is a major challenge for elected officials because the weather is fickle and citizens are upset when it doesn’t. This is not well done. “Winter is an obsession for local officials.”
Additionally, Professor Meloche said the snow removal market is not competitive, narrowing cities’ options for contractors and making the industry vulnerable to collusion – although he added that using private companies is generally cheaper than using municipal labor.
Costs are rising due to inflation in machinery and labor, but the quality of snow removal is also rising, he noted.
In recent decades, the city has dumped polluted snow into rivers around the island of Montreal instead of taking it to snow dumps, he added. In addition, Montreal and other Canadian cities expected residents to stay home during bad weather.
“Today we know that people are going to go out in a storm anyway, and we don’t want them to get hurt, especially because they can claim compensation from the city after injuries sustained on icy sidewalks. »
Maja Vodanovic agrees. The mayor of Lachine, who is originally from Croatia, remembers how impressed she was when she saw snow for the first time and the reaction of city teams. “It’s like an army clearing the snow and making the city livable in winter,” she noted. “It’s quite simply an achievement and I don’t think we give it enough credit. »