April 17, 2024City CouncilMeeting 34

Private Laneway Plows

Council was asked to

Roads and Parking Services staff perform a municipal scan in Canada, or other comparable jurisdictions, to determine if public partnerships involving private laneway clearing vehicles complementing municipal plows have been explored
if such a partnership is determined to have been explored, staff identify what the lessons learned are
staff complete an internal review of the operational feasibility and legal permissibility of integrating such a service into the City’s established Maintenance Quality Standards and current operational practices
staff report back to the Transportation Committee and the Agriculture Rural Affairs Committee in Q4 2024 on the outcome of the municipal scan and internal review and, if deemed operationally feasible, the high-level requirements to deliver a pilot program, including but not limited to technology, staffing, resource, and budgetary requirements.

Carried

21 for, 4 against

in recent years, there has been an increase in the number of laneway plow and snow clearing services in Ottawa
these private operators have a significant number of resources, both in terms of personnel and equipment and frequently arrive on residential streets significantly before municipal street plows arrive and often have “dead time” that could be applied more productively to street clearing if there were a policy to accommodate such activities
this discrepancy between arrival times is particularly acute in rural villages, but is also observed city-wide
a public partnership could be explored that would see the City provide compensation to private laneway clearing vehicles for complementing municipal plows by assisting with clearing portions of the winter road maintenance schedule on residential roads prior to when municipal plows are able to attend a given beat
this may reduce costs and improve service delivery times, reducing stress on some municipal resources.

This entry was transcribed from the City Clerk's official minutes. If anything here looks wrong, the minutes are the authority.