This winter, if your street hasn't seen a snow plow, your neighbour may be to blame

When it snows, every Halifax Regional Municipality councillor can count on being inundated with phone calls complaining about its removal.

One councillor decided to hop in a snow plow to experience the situation first hand.

Lower Sackville's Paul Russell spent Sunday seeing for himself the challenges crews face when trying to clear the snow.

He quickly learned plows have a difficult time navigating around cars that have been left parked on city streets.

"[Operators] do like to give 6 feet of clearance when there's a vehicle on the right hand side and when you get two vehicles parked across the street from each other, that makes the road basically impassible," Russell told NEWS 95.7's The Rick Howe Show.

"What we're faced with is a number of people who are parked on the street, the snow plow operators not being able to plow the street and then a number of people calling to complain that their street has not been plowed."

Russell was able to take a photo of an example of the situation on a major street in Sackville, which showed two pickup trucks parked across the street from one another (see above).

"We would have had to back up that street ... it would have left quite a number of people without their street plowed," he explained.

"Thankfully one of the drivers came out and moved his truck so we were able to get by."

Russell thinks HRM could do a better job of notifying people when it's enforcing the overnight winter parking ban.

He'd also like to see more vehicles violating it be ticketed or towed away.

"That would certainly send a message to say there's a storm here, we need the streets cleared and here's a reminder of what will happen if you don't get the streets cleared," he said.

Russell also experienced the difficulty cul-de-sacs pose to plow drivers because there aren't many places to put the snow.

"You want to clear to the curb, so it either goes in the centre of the cul-de-sacs where a lot of people park their cars, or it goes by the driveway and onto the lawn."

The final lesson Russell learned is being a snow plow driver can feel like a thankless job.

"Nobody is happy to see a snow plow driver because you've shovelled out your driveway and it fills it back in," he said.

"But they do perform a necessary service and we need to be able to help them out by getting our cars off the streets when we know it's going to snow."