Local street, road crews make progress on snow removal

Two area supervisors said the effort to remove snow from the weekend winter storm should ease in time for Monday morning rush hour.

The Colorado Springs Streets Division had 45 vehicles in service, while the El Paso County Department of Transportation had 35.
Both had been on full call-out status since the storm began Friday evening.

Despite removal slowed by ice that formed under a layer of snow, both departments reported making good progress by Sunday afternoon.

“The ice and cold are hampering the effectiveness of our de-icers,” David Scalfri, streets operations manager for the city.
“But we’ll re-evaluate at midnight to decide what’s needed in the morning.”

Scalfri said all major streets, school zones and hospital zones have been cleared and treated with anti-skid material.

The county will decide early Monday morning whether to scale back snow removal operations.

“(Our roads are) about 75 to 80 percent clear, which is pretty good at this point,” Max Kirschbaum, the county’s operations manager for public services.
“We also had our graders out on gravel roads.”

Kirschbaum said his crews will next focus on clearing neighborhood streets in the north section of the county where up to a foot of snow fell.