With Toronto just barely recovering from more than 20 cm of snowfall on Wednesday night and another 25 cm possible on the weekend, city officials are telling the public to keep their cars off designated snow routes so they can continue to plow.
“Snow routes are primarily located in the downtown core and include all street car routes,” the city’s General Manager for Transportation Services Barbara Gray said Friday during a morning media briefing.
“If you’re looking for parking downtown, please find off-street parking. If you do need to park on the street, please check on the pole for snow route signage.”
Gray said vehicles parked on snow routes will be towed at the owner’s expense with a fine of $75-$200 plus the tow costs.
Vincent Sferrazza, the city’s director of Transportation Services, told the media briefing that 1,500 tickets have been issued so far to cars that have been illegally parked on the snow routes and at least 10 vehicles have been towed.
Following the weekend, Gray said city crews will set to work on removing the large piles of snow left behind by plows.
“This snow can restrict traffic flow, and can obstruct sightlines, and can create issues for both pedestrians and parking,” she said. “Snow removal requires crews to collect the snow into dump trucks and remove it to a designated snow storage.”
She added the city’s declaration of major snow storm conditions remains in effect throughout the weekend.
Sferrazza said since Wednesday’s night’s first snowstorm, “hundreds” of crew members and 1,400 piece of equipment have been removing snow from “roads, cycling infrastructure, sidewalks, multi-paths, literally ongoing on back to back rounds.”
“We’ve had multiple passes that were required (not only) because of the heavy snow, but because of the cold, frigid temperatures,” said Sferrazza. “The snow was not melting, so as a result, multiple rounds had to be activated in order to properly clear the snow to make all of the roads, sidewalks, bicycle lanes safe and passable.”
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Sferrazza said both arterial roads and bicycling lanes required four rounds of plowing.
“What is rare is that we had actually had to activate two rounds of plowing for local roads,” he said. “That’s equivalent to approximately 60,000 lane kilometres of roadway that has been cleared since Wednesday evening.”
“If you see an area that needs clearing, let us know by submitting a 311 service request, either online, through the 311 app, or through a phone call,” Sferrazza advised.
He also reminded homeowners not to shovel snow onto any public right-of-ways, which is a “violation of our bylaw,” and instead shovel it onto their own property.