When will your street be plowed? City reveals 2025 snow clearing maps for Fort St. John

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — With the first significant snowfall of the season upon us, the City of Fort St. John has provided a visual guide to snow removal plans for 2025. 

In a November 14th Facebook post, the City of Fort St. John detailed its new snow removal category map for 2025, which was approved by council with an update to its snow clearing policy. 

The category terminology replaces the city’s previous ‘priority-based’ system, and consists of five different areas of the city. 

Plows will focus on each category in order, with category one prioritized first: 

• Category one: 100th Street and 100th Avenue, major thoroughfares, and adjacent sidewalks
• Category two: Collector routes and adjacent sidewalks
• Category three: Transit routes, core avenues and adjacent sidewalks
• Category four: Frontage roads and downtown paved lanes
• Category five: Residential and commercial streets based on a two-week rotation

During a January council meeting, the director of public works and utilities for Fort St. John noted workers required an average of 2,400 hours of work to clear 10 centimetres of snow from the entire city. 

Alongside the new category-based system, the council approved new parking restrictions to the city, which vary based on where the vehicle is located.

According to the restrictions approved in an October council meeting, residents are not allowed to street park on category one roads, with the exception of 100th Street and 100th Avenue, or on any streets where snow windrows are present. 

A snow windrow is a pile of snow left by a snow plow. These can be located at the bottom of a driveway, on the side of the road or in the middle of a road on the yellow lines, depending on how snow clearing is handled.

In the City of Fort St. John, snow windrows on major roads can be found in the middle of the road, as they are removed by city-operated skid steers. 

On 100th Street and 100th Avenue, residents are allowed to park outside of the hours of 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., which the city cites as times when snow removal operations are active. 

Residents are also restricted from parking on streets during the area’s designated snow-clearing days. 

According to the city’s winter road maintenance information page, each residential neighbourhood will be assigned a specific day of the week for snow clearing services. 

The city has also stated it is exploring the possibility of integrating snow-clearing schedules and reminders into its Waste Wise app.

To see a map of the residential snow clearing schedule, see below.