WINNIPEG — Snow, ice ruts and cold have created some of the worst road conditions in decades across Winnipeg.

“We’re looking at the coldest conditions that we’ve seen in 100 years,” said Brad Sacher, the director of the city’s public works department. “We’ve got a number of senior staff, folks that have been working on snow and ice control for 30, 35 years, saying they have to go a long way back to remember conditions as difficult to deal with as we’ve had.”

Sacher said cold temperatures are making it extremely tough to remove ice ruts coating city streets.

He stressed crews are doing their best in a difficult situation.

“The ridges become almost like concrete,” he said. “We’ve been working on them in the evenings and overnight. It’s very hard, even with grader blades, to take that ice off.”

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The safety of streets takes priority over saving money, however the budget is considered during cleaning operations, Sacher said.

“One of the things we always want to avoid when we are looking at spending millions of dollars on an operation is you aren’t going to get into the middle of an operation and have another snowfall come on top of it and have to repeat everything you just completed,” he said. “It’s not a good use of resources.”

Crews contracted out to clean snow zone J completely missed the section during the most recent plowing operation.

St. Vital Coun. Brian Mayes called for the contractor for the zone to be terminated, but the chair of the public works committee said that isn’t an option right now.

“The solutions have to come after, not during, because we don’t have equipment to put there,” said Coun. Justin Swandel.

The city is aware of the problem and said plows will clean zone J over the next day or two.