It may still be curling season but the sound of sweeping in the streets in the coming days will not be made by people participating in the sport.
The City of Kelowna has embarked on its annual spring road sweep, shifting from snow clearing to sand, rock and dust sweeping. And city crews are asking residents for help to get the work done properly.
Crews will start the city-wide spring sweep Monday and work in expected to be complete by the end of April.
“The spring sweep is particularly important to remove sand and dirt left on roads over the winter,” said Stephen Bryans, roadways operations supervisor. “We’ll do this sweep and then one more later in the year. We’ll also do eight additional sweeps of the bike lanes.”
To make the most of the work, residents are asked to keep their vehicles and moveable basketball hoops off streets wherever possible, so the sweepers can fully clean the street in one pass.
The city said if it rains, sweeping is postponed until road conditions dry out.
“Road signs will be set up in each neigbourhood to let residents know the street sweepers are coming and to give people time to move their vehicles,” said Bryans, adding residents cooperation makes a big difference every year.
Sweeping crews will be work 20 hours a day during the clean-up, covering a total of 1,600 kilometers of road, including bike lanes.
