Winter Maintenance Review

The City of Markham is dedicated to ensuring that our residents are able to move about in their daily lives, no matter what the weather or conditions. As another winter season has passed, we would like to hear your comments on how we did. Please fill out the survey below and give us your feedback through the What's Your Story or Places sections.

Markham staff is currently preparing a Winter Maintenance Workshop with Council consisting of two sessions, that will look at the current service level, costs, and implications of winter operations. We will include your feedback in the presentation to Council.

Do you know the City classifies our roads based on the traffic volume and its characteristics?

Our roads consists of three classifications: Primary, Secondary and Local.

• Primary roads carry high traffic volumes and include transit and emergency routes for ambulance, fire and police.
• Secondary roads connect to primary road and include hills, curves and access points.
• Local roads carry very low traffic volume and are not intended to carry through traffic.

Do you know that the Province has legislated Minimum Maintenance Standards for winter maintenance? Do you know that the City exceeds these provincial standards already?

The Provincial legislation O.Reg. 239/02 requires local road plowing operations to start at 10 cm of snow fall, and to be completed within 24 hours. Markham's road plowing starts when snowfall reaches or exceeds 7.5 cm (3 inches) and is completed within 12 to 16 hours. For our Primary roads, we dispatch our crew at the start of the snow fall to achieve bare surface condition.

Find out more about the Province's legislated standards, and the City's standards on winter maintenance in the Documents section to the right.

Want to know the classification of the street you live on? and find out winter operations status?

We have a winter maintenance application/website that can help you; go to the right hand side and give it a try! Simply put in your street address and the classification will be shown on the top right corner.

Hate those piles of snow at the end of your driveway the plows make? Those are called windrows. Do you know that the City provides a Windrow Assistance Program for residents that are over 60 years of age or with a disability?

Find out about our Windrow Assistance Program in the Documents section to the right, and see if you qualify.

Each winter the question of whether or not the City should include city-wide windrow removal comes up. Do you know...

It’s estimated that adding windrow removal services to every home (excluding condos/apartments/rear lane housing) would increase property taxes significantly. Timing of the windrow clearing would depend on the plowing operations. Roads are plowed based on road classification with primary and secondary roads plowed first to permit traffic flow and access for emergency vehicles then local roads are plowed. Windrow clearing only happens after the road is plowed – this could take from 4 to 8 hours to occur. It would not be immediate and due to the size of city’s road network would be impossible to every home plowed and windrow cleared before our residents leave for work. When storms occur will impact the timing of when the plows and windrow clearing occurs on your road. Windrow clearing would only include one car width and would not include windrows from sidewalk plows.