City crews have completed clearing the snow from priority routes but residential streets are clogged by the accumulation and many drivers are being forced to dig themselves out.

Calgary received about 36 centimetres of snow over the last few weeks and the city says this has been the snowiest February in the last five years.

The city says it is working its way through its seven-day snow clearing plan and crews are now concentrating on turning lanes, off-ramps and feeder routes in Calgary communities.

The build up of snow in some communities is creating challenging driving conditions for residents and delivery vehicles.

City crews will not remove the snow from residential streets but they will use heavy equipment to knock down the mounds and level out the ruts.

“We don’t remove snow from residential areas but we’ll be in there to level any of the rutting and try and deal with any of the trouble spots,” said Bill Biensch, Road Maintenance Manager, City of Calgary. “The procedure is essentially to level any of the snow that’s rutted, so they’re packing it down, they’re not moving it to the side because it would then create large wind rows so simply leveling the ruts and they’re applying abrasives or materials at all the stop and yield signs so that the traffic has traction.”

A lot of people are being good neighbours and are helping out by clearing driveways and parking spots but for some it has been a frustrating experience.

“The city is not clearing the snow on anything by major highways, which is a problem. I understand it’s a budgetary issue but take a look at the streets, it’s covered in snow, especially after the snowfall we had,” said Adam Moscovatch.

“I think the city could be doing a little bit better of a job picking up the snow,” said Colin Scott.

“We’re dealing with it to ensure that people are being able to get out of their communities. We thank the citizens of Calgary for continuing to work with us. We know it’s not a great situation, they’re having to drive out of the snow but our plan presently is just to reduce ruts, we don’t remove snow from residential areas,” said Biensch. “There is a lot of residential streets and bus pads and things that we’ve not being able to get to because we’re continually resetting the snow and ice plan because of snow.”

For more information on the city’s snow removal process, click HERE.