As Edmonton prepares for another wild weather swing this week that’ll see above-freezing temperatures, residents say the yo-yoing mercury is leading to treacherous road ruts that’s making drivers lose control.
“They have never been this bad,” said Vannessa Brown, who has lived in south Edmonton’s Grandview Heights area for about a decade and said the ruts and bumps on her residential roads this winter are the worst she’s ever driven on.
“I think it’s the weather patterns that we’ve had. It was really warm, created the ruts, and then it’s been very cold and froze them.”
Last week, she was driving her brand-new 2024 Kia Sorento home from dropping her kids off at school when she spun out and crashed on 62 Avenue, west of 122 Street. Her vehicle did a 180 and ended up hitting a brick wall in front of a home.
“I very, very easily lost control going, I think, maybe 20km/h at most,” Brown said. She called her husband, who turned around from heading to work, “And then he actually did the exact same thing!”
Thankfully, her husband’s vehicle didn’t hit anything.
“He realized how easy it was to spin out on this,” Brown said. “I felt better knowing that he lost control in the exact same spot. He was going 10 km/h he’s like, ‘I still lost control.’”
A few hours later, Brown went back to measure how deep the ruts were — four or so inches, she said — and came across another vehicle that had lost control and ended up on a shared use path beside the road.
In conversations with neighbours over the days since, Brown has learned many others have also lost control on the icy, rut-covered side streets. Her husband also saw a vehicle spin out and crash into a tree while out out walking the dog.
“Had that tree not have been there, he would have hit a vehicle on a driveway.”
A tree in Edmonton’s Grandview Heights area where residents say a vehicle lost control due to ruts and crashed in February 2025.
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Brown said her van has probably a few thousand dollars in damage due to cameras and sensors on the new vehicle. While it’s a headache, the fear of someone getting hurt is what upsets her more.
“To me, that’s actually the biggest concern — I could not imagine seeing a child getting hit because you cannot control your car.”
She has now cautioned her children to be careful when walking in the neighbourhood, explaining a vehicle may not be able to stop if it hits a rut the wrong way and goes spinning.
By Tuesday, city crews had come by and smoothed the problem road in Grandview Heights.
Further south in the higher-density MacTaggart neighbourhood, residents say streets have been treacherous there, as well.
“Our road is a major thoroughfare because there’s lots of apartments and townhouses and then a school up around the corner, So this road is really heavily used,” said resident Jill Assaly, who has lived in the southwest Edmonton area for six years.
“If you go above 10- 15km/h, people spin out. I’ve seen half a dozen cars spin out on our road.
“Never have I ever seen it like this.”
Recently, one sliding vehicle even took out a mailbox, she said, adding had it been less frigid the past few weeks, the outcome could have been worse.
“When it’s warmer out, our kids walk to school — so it could have been a child walking down a sidewalk and not a mailbox that was knocked over,” she said.
“It’s very dangerous. I personally have called 311 five or six times to complain about it. And they told us we weren’t a priority,” she said.
A road in south Edmonton’s MacTaggart area where residents said a vehicle lost control and slammed into a mailbox.
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Assaly said city crews did come by to smooth the road but feels the job wasn’t completed.
“I don’t think they did a good job because you can see the ruts are still there,” she said, adding crews also only sanded one side of the street. “I don’t know what the reason for that is. It doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever.”
The City of Edmonton said this year, there’s been more snowfall than usual which, combined with frequent freeze/thaws cycles and poor compliance with parking bans, has led to challenges in fully addressing the rutting on residential roads.
“It’s tough to eliminate ruts, especially with the level of freeze and thaw temperature swings we’re getting. That is particularly what’s causing it,” said city councillor Andrew Knack.
So far this year, the city has conducted one cycle of residential blading, following a Phase 2 residential parking ban that was in effect between Jan. 7 and 24.
Unfortunately, more snow arrived over those weeks.
“How you tackle that — it’s tough because the crews, city staff did go out and do neighbourhood bleeding and they cleaned up a lot of ruts. And then pretty much as soon as that work was done — or I think two days before the last communities were done — we saw some pretty major snow fall again,” said city councillor Andrew Knack.
“So there’s always that balance of how often are you going to go out?”
Knack said urban sprawl has strained the city’s ability to provide good service, noting Edmonton saw its population increase by 73,000 people in 2024 alone.
“That’s more than the city of St. Albert in one year has moved into Edmonton. How do you keep up with that?” he said. “The physical growth of our city has been a major contributing factor to just how much you can do.
“The way we are growing as a city has created massive sustainability issues.”
Knack said Edmonton’s snow clearing is limited by the budget. While major roads are cleared to the pavement, side streets in neighbourhoods are bladed to a five-centimetre snowpack once a winter season.
“I’d love to either be in there three, four times a year or I’d love to actually do a hauling out of the snow once a year. But the type of budget you need to have in order to do that is pretty amazing.”
Clearing away snow in dump trucks is much more expensive — Knack cited Montreal as an example, which has a much smaller physical footprint and a $300-million snow clearing budget to Edmonton’s $66 million — and said unless residents want to pay more in taxes, we all have to live with the current situation.
“It’s just constantly going to be a tension of management unless one day we get to a budget level where we can actually haul away the entire snow. But I’m not sure folks are ready for that kind of budget conversation.”
Knack said residential roads could be in better condition if more vehicle owners obeyed parking bans.
“I had a chance to go out with one of our neighbourhood blading crews last month and you can see just how much their quality of work is impacted when there are cars still sitting on the street. And it’s only a handful of people that leave their cars on the street, but that handful of people negatively impacts everyone in the city.”
City council is considering ramping up enforcement by towing vehicles and owners paying the cost. The discussion will continue at a future council meeting and in the meantime, administration has been asked to come up with a report that includes an analysis on the city’s parking fine options and a strategy around key locations.
“I think we are at the point now where people have to understand — this is something that happens every winter. We’re not the only city that that does this,” Knack said.
“We need to maybe be willing to be a little more firm and say if your car’s being left on the street when a neighbourhood blading is occurring, we’re going to remove your car off that street. It’s going to get towed. Because if we do that, we can actually provide better service.”
In the meantime, the city said residents encountering ruts greater than five centimetres deep are encouraged to call 311 or use the 311 app to report them.