Imagine it’s a cozy winter night, you decide to go to bed at a normal time, for old people, like
10pm, you slip into comfortable sleep and then... you’re jolted awake by this shrieking sound.
If you’re from Montreal you know exactly what’s happening. If you’re from elsewhere
in the country you might have no idea if you didn’t see the title of this video,
just like we were very confused when this happened to us the first time.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Montreal snow removal. We mean that both seriously
and sarcastically. This city’s management of winter is an impressive and mesmerizing
logistical accomplishment at the same time that it’s one of
the most surprisingly annoying things about living here. Let’s start from the beginning.
Montreal isn’t the snowiest city in the country but it is on the higher end.
The Metropolis of French Canada gets 40% more snow than Halifax, 70% more than Toronto,
and almost five times as much as Vancouver. Combine that with low temperatures preventing
snow from melting as quickly and Montreal has a lot of snow to deal with.
Snow management in Montreal begins during the snowfall when plows try their best to keep roads,
sidewalks, and bike lanes still usable by pushing away the snow.
This part is pretty similar to other cities, except that it’s a bit more comprehensive here.
In Toronto, where we lived for a few years, sidewalks in central areas of the city were
usually the responsibility of residents, apparently being too small for plows. This
is a little confusing because it doesn’t seem to us that Montreal’s sidewalks are any bigger.
But the really fascinating part of winter management here isn’t the snow plowing,
it’s the snow removal. Pushing snow to the side is just a temporary fix here. The actual
solution is to collect snow from neighbourhoods and truck it to snow dumps around the city,
including this former quarry whose snow piles stick around well into the summer.
The process of snow removal starts with an orange sign prohibiting parking on one
side of the street within an upcoming 12 hour period. People can take their
cars to different streets or to one of a number of designated winter parking lots.
This information is also available on the Info-Neige website and app.
Sometime within that designated period, when they expect the actual
snow removal operations to happen soon, the fleet of tow trucks comes out to prowl.
The siren is meant as a last minute warning to get people to move their cars.
Sometimes they stroll down streets blaring it as a notice to everyone, and sometimes they stop in
front of a particular car, honking and clanging as a very final warning, before towing it.
With all of the cars out of the way, the snow plows come through, including smaller
ones handling precision work like sidewalks and curbs, and a larger one gathering up all
of that snow to put it in the middle of the road. Often these plows make multiple rounds.
Once all of the snow is assembled in the middle of the road, the most dramatic step happens,
where a large snow blower comes through to gobble up the snow and spit it out into a
dump truck or semi-trailer truck following along right beside it.
Afterwards you can still get smaller plows coming through, tidying up any leftover snow.
This is a massive, synchronized operation covering the entire city over a few days,
with lots of moving pieces, including empty dump trucks waiting in line for the snow blower.
The results are impressive. Because this is snow removal and not just snow clearing,
streets can look completely different before and after, especially for bigger snowfalls.
Even the initial snow clearing is impressive though. We’ve mentioned the bike lanes in
other videos before and, while there are still a few gaps in the clearing network, the overall
results are actually pretty respectable, at least as we’ve seen in our borough.
For a snowstorm that started at 2am, we went out at 8am to check the condition of the bike lanes.
The main routes had already been cleared and were getting used even though it was
8am on a Saturday morning with the snowstorm still ongoing.
As for sidewalks, we already mentioned that in much of Toronto, for example, they’re the
responsibility of residents. That results in inconsistent clearing, because some residents
aren’t as physically capable, or they’re on vacation, or they just don’t care.
We have noticed more problems with ice on sidewalks in Montreal though,
probably because of the colder temperatures and
the fact that plows can push away snow more easily than they can break up ice.
Another impressive part of winter maintenance in Montreal is the technology, especially Info-Neige,
a website and app with up-to-date information on the status of each street,
including whether parking is prohibited, and whether snow removal is planned,
underway, or complete. It even lets you follow the location of plows on the map.
That’s the positive side of winter management in Montreal. The frustrating part is mainly the
noise, especially at night. We already covered the tow trucks, which have a
variety of siren sounds they use, sometimes enhanced with a generous amount of honking.
One tow truck driver told us they don’t make these sounds past 10:30 pm,
but they definitely seem to push it a bit later. That’s not all though, because they’re followed
by the actual snow removal process, with noise coming from large machine engines,
the beeping of vehicles backing up, and the grinding of plows on the road.
The timing of this depends a lot on what street you’re on.
For us it’s often finished by 11 or 11:30pm, but it’s not uncommon to have large bouts of
activity happening in the actual middle of the night, between 1:30 and 3:00am.
For some that’s no big deal, but as someone who prefers to go to sleep at 10 or 10:30 and often
has sleeping trouble, particularly waking up easily and having trouble getting back to sleep,
this operation is actually a pretty stressful part of winter.
On the positive side, the tow truck sirens seem to get less frequent over the course
of the winter as people get better at moving their cars. On the negative side, all of this
can happen multiple nights in a row because they clear each side of the street separately.
Obviously it’s hard to have such a comprehensive snow removal process
without some level of annoyance but we also think it could be managed differently.
Preferring to just tow cars instead of relying on sirens,
especially at times that people might plausibly be sleeping, would be a good start.
Car owners might appreciate being able to leave their cars until the last
minute but we question whether that’s worth bothering or waking up the neighbourhood.
To be fair, we’ve heard from drivers that signage isn’t always put up with enough notice,
which is a valid complaint that should be fixed.
Some people might say that there are too many cars to tow, but fewer drivers would
leave their car in the wrong place if they knew they’d get ticketed and towed.
Compliance already seems to get better as the winter goes on so people can do it.
Another practical improvement would be to replace the shrill beeping backup
noise on the machinery with newer white noise-based sounds that are
less disruptive. Many of the vehicles actually have this already, but it’s far from universal.
Finally, maybe there could be better planning of late night operations in residential areas.
It’s hard to tell how much of this they do, but a recent experience of waking up at 1:30am
and then again an hour later says there might be room for improvement here.
One problem with the process of snow removal in Montreal that goes on behind the scenes is
corruption. It’s not something you directly experience as a resident,
but there are lots of stories of collusion, bid-rigging, and even violence among contractors.
This probably pushes up costs to the city, although they have been cracking down.
So, that’s what winter maintenance is like here, the positive and negative.
Locals find all of this so normal that they can’t understand why you would possibly be
interested enough to film it, but the whole spectacle really is fascinating to us.
Montrealers who hear our amazement might wonder how things work differently where we’re from.
The funny thing is that snow clearing in other places we’ve lived wasn’t
interesting or disruptive enough for us to really notice or remember like it is here.
We can say two things though. First, we’re pretty sure they relied more on plowing than
actual removal, which is why the truck system here is so interesting. Second,
although there were various bans on parking in winter for snow clearing, we don’t ever remember
them being enforced with air raid sirens. Tickets and towing seemed to be enough.
What we’d really like to learn is how snow removal works in other places that are
snowier than Montreal, like Quebec City or St. John’s, Newfoundland. We’ve seen
clips from Quebec City of the snow blower and dump truck teams taking away snow like here—do
they have the sirens too, or have they figured out a better system?