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The Super Bowl broadcast appeared to have made tackling Calgary’s last major snowfall tougher, the city’s transportation manager said Monday.

A call out to city crew members and private contractors to voluntarily clear snow on Feb. 5 received a lighter response than normal, said Mac Logan.

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“We did not have as many people responding to our request to do extra shifts as we otherwise would,” said Logan, who couldn’t give a comparative number.

“Council has expressed in the past we have a certain limitless ability to bring people in and that’s not the case.”

Those called, he said, didn’t mention the Super Bowl game, but “they don’t respond or say, ‘I’m not available.'”

That fall-off in voluntary crews as the full brunt of a heavy snowfall hit wouldn’t have made a massive difference in the Monday morning commute, said Logan, but it was felt.

“It couldn’t hurt. We would have been able to push more material off the roadways,” he said. “Would half a dozen more trucks made a huge difference overall in the city? No, but to individual routes, yes.”