Street sweepers are plying the streets as crews are working to clear the sand from the road surfaces.
The street sweeping began around the middle of March and is expected to be finished by the end of May.
Maarten Stam, manager of works for the municipality, said crews sweep the streets twice.
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The first sweeping removes around 90 per cent of the material, which is then hauled away. The remaining fine sand and gravel is swept using a vacuum sweeper.
Stam said the work is time-consuming because of the municipality’s extensive road network.
Municipal crews maintain around 165 kilometres of roads. In winter, these kilometres need to be doubled as the sanding trucks cover one lane at a time. On some wider roads, trucks need to make four passes in order to clear the full width of the road.
During the winter, road maintenance crews use more than 1,500 cubic metres of sand on the streets.
This would be enough to fill 5,000 standard-sized bathtubs, or 200 dump trucks.
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In addition, the municipality uses around 77 cubic metres of salt on the roads.
That’s enough to fill almost 1.3 million standard-sized two-ounce salt shakers.
The municipality does not sweep away the salt.
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