Upper Roslyn residents irked by traffic, snow removal problems

"We have a lot of problems on our street," says Erin Twik, an Upper Roslyn Avenue resident who says the street's proximity to the northern border with the City of Montreal has left it cut off. "We're like the forgotten part of Westmount. We live in Westmount, but we often don't get the services."

Twik maintains that the City of Montreal has been providing better snow removal on its length of Roslyn, which runs northward to Queen Mary Road. "Last snow storm, we were not cleaned until so many complaints were made," she says. "Eventually they came and told us there was some sort of miscommunication. It's problematic for us."

The snow removal situation, Twik adds, has only worsened longtime traffic problems on Upper Roslyn. "I called Westmount Public Security because there was so much traffic on my street because it hadn't been cleaned, and they told me they couldn't do anything, that I had to call the police."

However, Twik acknowledged that snow removal improved following the last storm, when many residents lodged complaints. "I know that a lot of people were frustrated with the snow removal. But we definitely have our share of problems on this street. We've had meetings with the councillors and we're still sort of ignored and nothing happens for us."

Given the amount of recent snowfalls, Westmount Public Works director Jacques Lahaie steadfastly defends his department's record. "If you look at what they're doing in Montreal and in Westmount, I don't think our streets were that bad," he says. Lahaie enumerated some of the problems the department faced dealing with the snowfalls.

"We were limited to a certain number of trucks to take away the snow because of where we had to dump the snow." He says the situation eased somewhat after the provincial government granted permission for the former Turcot railway yard to be used as a snow dump. "We had three days when we had major problems because of where we had to dump the snow," says Lahaie.