When Will The Left Hand Turning Lane On 1st NW Be Cleared - Councillor Asks

Snow piled up in the center, and now left hand turning lane on 1st Avenue NW, had a councillor asking when the snow would be removed to allow people to be able to make proper left hand turns.

“With our recent snowfall and the fact that we changed some of these roadways (to turn in) the center lanes when do we remove the piles of snow from the middle of 1st Ave NW and any of those other ones that have center turning lanes now?” Councillor Dawn Luhning asked. “We really need to ensure those piles of snow are off the streets before Monday starts and things like that.”

For those who are not aware 1st Avenue NW, from Manitoba Street West to Oxford Street West, is no longer a four lane - two lanes of traffic north and south - but now is a single thru lane on each side with traffic turning left sharing a middle lane.

Graders scrape packed snow and ice on Main Street onto the center median early Wednesday morning - MJ Independent photo

City Manager Jim Puffalt said he had already spoken to the city works manager earlier on Monday about removing the snow and doing thigs a little bit differently on 1st Avenue NW.

City Works Manager Darrin Stephanson said the reason the snow was piled in the center of 1st Avenue NW was because of new staff but it would be removed by the next day - Tuesday morning.

“There are some new staff in that department and we did have a discussion about changing our practice about there…going forward we will no longer be doing a temporary windrow storage until it can be hauled to the center of 1st Avenue rather it will be deposited into the parking lanes and metered areas until we can pick it up and haul it away,” Stephanson said.

By Tuesday morning the snow in the shared left hand turning lane had been removed.