City Service Ride-Alongs Part 1: Horticulture & Transit Maintenance
Council is nearing the end of our summer recess. After resting up a bit and visiting families in other parts of the continent, I wanted to spend time catching up with our City crews at the frontlines and learn about their day-to-day work in various lines of public services. From the horticulture team maintaining roadside shrubs, to the transit garage keeping our buses running, to riding along with waste collectors on their daily route, it was eye opening to see what our City workers do on a daily basis, and how they manage public curiosities, challenges, and ideas to make things better for Edmontonians. A lot of their work often goes unappreciated - so next time you are out and see a City worker, please take a moment to thank them.
To round out my visits, I wanted to share some highlights and learnings from my ride-alongs with you in a two-part blog. This first part will cover horticulture and bus maintenance, and the second part (coming soon) will touch on waste collection and the Transit Community Action Team (TCAT).
Horticulture Crew Ride-Along
Horticulture is one of half a dozen teams at the City in charge of anything “green”-related, including Trees, Naturalization, Landscaping, and Turf Maintenance. My visit was with the Horticulture crew on the Southside - there is also a Northside crew given the scale of Edmonton. Together, the crews maintain over 20,000 shrub beds in the City, which is a massive inventory that has grown significantly over the past many decades. There are 2,300 A-Level sites (think: horticulture that you see at park entrances) and 18,000 B-Level sites (which involve lots of shrub trimming). In total, this amounts to over 250,000 m2 of A-Level shrub beds and over 1.5 million m2 of B-Level shrub beds! I joined the crew working on B-Level sites and had a chance to see how the team works, and ask lots of questions.
People often wonder why some shrub beds look different from others, it's likely due to their classification and service standards. In case you didn’t know:
A+ Level shrub beds are maintained on a bi-weekly cycle. Examples include City Parks within the downtown core and at City Hall.
A-Level shrub beds are maintained five times during the season through mechanical weed control. Examples include City level parks, District parks, Recreation centres and Business Improvement Areas (BIAs).
B-Level shrub beds are maintained two times during the season through mechanical weed control. Examples include landscaped boulevards, neighbourhood parks and non-premier open spaces.
Another topic I hear a lot from residents about is turf management. Our turf management policy has undergone many changes, and our current service delivery is a reflection of that. I heard similar sentiments from the horticulture team as I heard earlier in the year from their counterparts in snow removal - that frontline employees want to be empowered to make decisions in real-time to better support service delivery rather than waiting for direction or operating in their own silos (e.g. someone in shrub trimming helping with tree maintenance if they come across an issue in the field). There is a current pilot that’s happening in the downtown core, where we are trialing an integrated approach to turf management - this may potentially yield important lessons about efficiency and better service delivery across the City.
Richard Paterson Garage Visit
A vast network of City workers help Edmonton's transit system continue to meet the needs of residents. We have people who operate public transportation vehicles (buses, DATS, and the LRT), transit peace officers, maintenance teams, servicing, cleaners, traffic engineers, and more. I had the opportunity to visit the Richard Paterson Garage, one of six transit garages across the City that focuses on bus maintenance for ETS and for a few surrounding municipalities, as well as servicing the new hydrogen buses. One hydrogen bus is set to be put into service in Edmonton, and another in Strathcona County (check out my recent blog on hydrogen week here).
I got an in-depth look at Transit Fleet Maintenance right from the garage shop floor, and received a high-level Heavy-Duty Mechanics 101 education. Transit Fleet Maintenance has 123 technicians and 400 total front line maintenance employees, who work around the clock to make sure our fleet can move on the road and deliver critical city services. I met a number of them at Paterson today, who have been employed in their roles for an average of 14 years. Many of them came up through an internal apprenticeship program to get to where they are now. Collectively, there were a lot of years of experience and knowledge on the floor.
Recruitment continues to be top of mind for this work as the team and management work to build partnerships with post-secondary institutions and non-profit organizations focused on trades to increase apprenticeships, keep pace with emerging technologies, and increase the number of women working as heavy duty mechanics.
Many technicians mentioned that like all workplaces, there are always things that can be improved upon. Not too dissimilar from other workplaces, greater communication among teams can further break down silos and improve transparency. However, the work-life balance at Transit Fleet Maintenance, especially when compared with the private sector, has encouraged many of them to stay for as long as they have. On top of that, they are constantly upping their game in terms of skill-building and training as new technology like electric and hydrogen buses come aboard. Many parts and engines are refurbished or rebuilt and assembled in-house, helping the City save nearly $1 million last year alone.
While they can generalize across the work stations, many technicians have developed specialized niche areas and unique expertise within the sector. The workers are meticulous. They pride themselves in the day-to-day grind to keep the vehicles on the road. Because of their diligence and highly skilled maintenance quality, ETS buses have one of the highest lifespans at 18-20 years compared to North American cities of similar sizes (average 12 years).
It has been great getting out this recess to meet the teams on the frontlines who keep our City running and looking beautiful, and learn what they enjoy about their jobs, what could be improved, and how City policies and decision-making can help continually make service delivery better.
Look out for part two in this series, where I will share about the TCAT team, and waste collection.
