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The facts offered earlier this week by Jerry Dobrovolny, Vancouver’s general manager of engineering, show that the city has been working hard to keep roads clears. In December alone, Vancouver crews spread 7,000 tonnes of salt — seven times the amount the city uses in an average winter. Vancouver has spent $2.5 million battling snow, while Surrey has already spent nearly its entire $3.6-million snow-clearing budget. Clearly, municipalities are putting a lot of effort into keep us moving.

I live on a busy route and have fallen asleep on more than one night recently to the comforting sounds of the city salt trucks passing by. I always feel thankful to the municipal crews who toil through the night for the rest of us.

In Vancouver alone, keeping the roads clear is an enormous job — especially when Mother Natures keeps cycling new snowstorms through the region, one after the other, including the snowstorm forecast for early Friday.

According to the city’s engineering department, Vancouver has 363 kilometres of major roads and 29 bridges, which must be the main focus of snow-clearing and salting activities. Meanwhile, the city has 1,058 kilometres of local roads and 650 kilometres of lanes, or a combined 1,708 kilometres — nearly five times the combined total of major routes.

Surrey’s numbers are similar: 407 kilometres of arterial roads, 273 kilometres of collector roads, 1,409 kilometres of local roads, and 211 kilometres of lanes.