‘It was a brutal day’: Calls grow for Metro Vancouver to better prepare for snow

Tuesday’s snowfall was just an introduction to winter weather around Metro Vancouver, with more flurries in the forecast to wrap up the work week.

The storm that hit earlier this week was not a surprise, and prompted many people to question why municipalities weren’t better prepared for the conditions, which led to gridlock on major routes. With bridges shut down and highways blocked, some people endured commutes of more than 11 hours.

Like other vehicles, large trucks struggled through the snow.

“It was a brutal day,” Dave Earle with the BC Trucking Association recalled.

“One of the things that happens is that when you’re pulling a very heavy load, it’s really confounding because pulling that load makes it very difficult to get going, but if you don’t have a load you don’t have a lot of traction over your wheels so it’s very difficult to get going. It was just a really, really difficult time for everybody, and compounding that was commercial vehicles having to pick their way and try and find pathways through where other vehicles had stalled or cut them off or whatever it may be. It was just a brutal day for everyone.”

There have been questions about whether trucks and other vehicles were well equipped for the conditions Tuesday.

However, the answer isn’t so simple. Earle says between Lower Mainland infrastructure, and rules and regulations, there’s a lot to consider.

“Throwing on chains that we would use on Interior highways is very, very different because you can get into issues around pavement damage and infrastructure damage, as well as it being hard on the vehicles when there is not a lot of snow,” he explained.

“Some drivers use alternate traction devices. They’ll use cables, you can get textile-types of devices that aren’t approved for use on highways. So drivers really have to do their diligence and see what’s available and what’s going to work and what’s permitted for use on roads.”

The province has said it is not considering an urban snow tire mandate, despite calls from some that it’s time the government do so.

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Overall, though, it’s unclear if such a rule would make a real difference. Earle points to training and experience as major points that need to be considered, especially when it comes to other drivers who need to maneuver around semis.

“The biggest issue that we have, and it’s a confounding, reoccurring, continuing issue, is drivers getting cut off by other vehicles,” he told CityNews.

“When that driver is hanging back and leaving 20 or 30 metres of space between them and the next vehicle, that is not an invitation for somebody to deek into that and try and make a space. What ends up happening is the driver has to jam on their breaks and we end up in a jackknife situation. These drivers really need the room that they need to be able to get moving and maintain that momentum safely at a safe, slow speed. People jumping in and around them causes nothing but problems.”

Bus drivers take issue with Vancouver, Surrey road conditions

Meanwhile, those who opted to take transit rather than drive on their own were also stuck dealing with chaos.

The union representing Metro Vancouver bus drivers says cities, particularly Vancouver and Surrey, didn’t do enough to prepare.

“They knew the storm was coming, how bad, all that, they should have prepared themselves. It just left our members in the middle of nowhere basically. I was taking phonecalls until late that night,” Balbir Mann, president of Unifor Local 111, recalled.

He says there should have been more salting and sanding done on municipal roads, adding hills were among the biggest problems.

“They were not cleared properly. Even still to this day in Vancouver … Kingsway is really bad pulling and out of the bus stops. They should have cleaned up,” Mann said Thursday.

Hundreds of passengers found themselves stranded waiting for buses Tuesday, with vehicles struggling to get through backups and gridlocks themselves.

TransLink said Wednesday that traffic jams the afternoon and night before meant many of its buses returned to depots late — in some cases, several hours later.

“What happened for the most part last night is there were a number of traffic accidents all throughout Metro Vancouver and our buses are really only as good as the roads they drive on. If people’s cars are stuck in traffic, our buses probably are too,” TransLink spokesperson Dan Mountain previously told CityNews.

While passengers were stranded, so too were drivers, some for several hours after their shifts ended.

“Some of them couldn’t go to the washroom, heat got shut down on the bus, there was no help for a very long time. And I’ve heard a lot of them had to walk, basically park the bus and walk three or four kilometres in the storm,” he said.

Metro Vancouver snow summit

Snow packing onto highways and other roads created challenging conditions for just about everyone. With backups upon backups filling local routes, even plows had difficulty getting to trouble areas to clear them.

The response on a regional scale has come under question, and is something at least two councillors want to address.

Surrey councillor Linda Annis and New Westminster coun. Daniel Fontaine are pushing for a Metro Vancouver snow summit that would look at things like coordinating snow clearing response among cities, transit, and contractors.

Annis says what happened Tuesday is unacceptable.

“We knew this storm was coming for quite some time and considering that we knew, we should have had a better, integrated response to dealing with the snow removal off the roads. Many people were stranded for hours on end, including myself, and I think it’s high time that the municipalities work together to develop an integrated approach,” she told CityNews.

The Surrey councillor says she left Vancouver at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday. She did not get home to south Surrey until 4:45 a.m.

“It was the most ridiculous and frustrating experience, traffic-wise, I’ve ever had. It didn’t need to happen, the road should have been cleared, we knew the snow was coming,” Annis recalled.

While she understands the worst of the storm started through the rush hour period, she feels work should have been proactive, with salting and other measures done prior to the heavy snow.

Annis says she’s received “numerous complaints” from locals in Surrey about how the snow response — or lack thereof — played out.

She and Fontaine are calling on Delta Mayor George Harvie, the chair of the Metro Vancouver Regional District, and Minister of Transportation Rob Fleming to head up the initiative to avoid a similar occurrence in the future.

As for a timeline, Annis is hoping a summit can come together “before Christmas, if possible.”

While Friday’s snow storm isn’t expected to be nearly as bad as Tuesday’s, flurries are expected to fall during the afternoon commute.

The forecast currently calls for one to two centimetres.