Gatineau wants to optimize its snow clearing operations along narrow streets while improving safety. To that end, there is now a pilot project in place to allow parking on only one side of the street for the winter of 2024-2025.  

Narrow streets without obstructions on one side of the street would:

• facilitate operations by making it easier for equipment to circulate, which will improve service quality;
• enable emergency and public transit vehicles to circulate more safely; and
• improve drivers' visibility.

The pilot project will cover 30 street segments, from December 2024 to March 2025. This represents approximately 20% of Gatineau's most challenging narrow streets, for a total of 12.79 km.  

There are a number of issues related to winter on-street parking, such as:

• snow banks further constrict already narrow streets;
• more on-street parking in certain sectors; and
• institutions with insufficient parking nearby (e.g.: Agora, schools, cégeps, hospitals, etc.).

Those issues affect over 65 km of roads overall. The pilot project will cover close to 13 km in the different sectors:

Aylmer sector

Buckingham and Masson-Angers sectors

Gatineau sector

Hull sector

The streets were chosen because they faced the following issues:

• Safety:
  • difficulty if not impossibility for emergency and public transit vehicles to get through when cars are parked on both sides; or
  • difficulty if not impossibility for snow clearing equipment to get through, forcing them to reverse out of the street.
• Operational:
  • snow not cleared from streets during a storm when snow clearing equipment cannot get through;
  • snow banks left at the side of the street due to parked cars; or
  • slower operations.

Concerned residents were given the opportunity to express their views in 2023 as part of the public consultation on the policy on winter viability. The pilot project (at the time conceived as alternating street parking) was endorsed by 82% of residents.

• Alternating street parking would have addressed the issues of safety, quality of snow clearing operations (100%) and optimization of operations. The option of parking on one side of the street would address the issue of safety and optimization of operations, but would only improve snow clearing operations to 70%.
• The option of parking on one side of the street reduces the need for street signs from 650 to 325. This option would make it easier to understand the signs and limit costs to less than half of the other option.