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Montreal’s snow removal will be a little smarter this year.

The city of Montreal unveiled two new “smart” systems Thursday designed to improve the way it removes snow from its 10,000 kilometres of streets and sidewalks. One aims to cut down on the 33,000 cars towed every year and alert residents the snowblowers are coming, the other to better co-ordinate where dump trucks deposit their loads to improve efficiency and eliminate snow-dumping fraud.

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“The question we asked ourselves was ‘How do we make snow clearing better for citizens?’ ” said Anie Samson, executive committee member responsible for citizen services. “We have a problem — we tow 33,000 cars a year. It’s an average of 5,000 cars for every major snow clearing operation.”

It’s a costly headache for residents and slows snow clearing for the city. Lack of a trustworthy system to record where trucks were collecting their snow and dumping it was also hampering the system.