Talk:Snow removal in Montreal

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 18:56, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that more than 30,000 cars were being towed annually by the 1970s to accommodate snow removal efforts in Montreal? Source: No excuses are accepted. Cars remaining in the path of snow trucks are tagged with a $30 ticket and then towed to one of many lots set aside for the purpose. Each year the city hauls away about 30,000 cars during snowstorms.
  • ALT1: ... that a man-made glacier produced by the snow removed from streets in Montreal during the winter will often remain throughout the summer? Source: City spokesperson Philippe Sabourin calls it "Montreal's snow glacier." The dark mass of snow and ice, coloured by pollution, would tower above a street of Plateau triplexes.
  • ALT2: ... that the budget for the 2020–2021 Montreal snow removal season was reported at $179.7 million? Source: Le déneigement a coûté l'an dernier 179,7 millions de dollars à la Ville de Montréal, qui a prévu cette année une enveloppe de 177,7 millions.
  • Comment: This is my first DYK nomination, so I'm hoping that I'm doing this properly. Added a couple possible hooks, but generally I find the first is the most interesting.

Created by Siliconred (talk). Self-nominated at 18:48, 25 April 2022 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing: - See comments
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:
• Other problems: - ?

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting:
• Other problems:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: Siliconred, Welcome to Did you know! The rules say that within the past seven days, the article should be either created (sandbox → mainspace is eligible) or expanded fivefold or promoted to good article status. Now it wasn't really "created" within the past seven days, but I had a look at the history and it said that someone accepted the article on the 24 April, so you should have selected the "moved to mainspace" option. That's OK, it passes this part, and overall the article is short but interesting (the videos are extra helpful!)

Before I close my remarks, I also have a few things to add. In the lead, it says that the snow removal process is "the most expensive in the world" (that would be a brilliant hook!), but none of the three sources from CBC/Radio-Canada support this, and it doesn't appear in the body of the article. If you have an article in either language that says it, please cite it, else remove it. There's also this sentence: After criticism for disparities in effectiveness between neighborhoods, the city implemented centralized mandates for each borough in 2016 requiring snow removal to commence within 12 hours of a snowfall and for major roads to be cleared within 36 hours. -> please source it.

The "Influence" part doesn't really show the actual influence, only two articles criticising the snow removal systems in Boston and Chicago. They may be relevant to the article, but they should not purport to be influential unless the local governments implemented the methods like in Montreal when faced with criticism. Since both seem to be more like opinion pieces, you can cite these as a comparison with other systems instead.

The second improvement would be to specify that the dollars are Canadian dollars. At least in my country of origin we do know that Canada exists (the diaspora, after all!) but when we see dollar signs we think of the dollars of your southern neighbour unless specified otherwise. For prices for the faraway times, use Template:Inflation.

From the hooks, I removed the accent aigus from Montreal, as the name of the city in English (at least the one commonly used) is without them. You are basically already using the non-é versions, so why bother adding them here?

Overall, some work is needed, but when it's done, the article is poised to pass. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 03:01, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much for these comments!! This is incredibly helpful. I'll review now and make the recommended changes. SiliconRed (he/him • talk) 12:39, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Howdy Szmenderowiecki -- Changes applied! If you have other comments do let me know, or if you have other suggestions for hooks I'd be keen to hear. SiliconRed (he/him • talk) 17:56, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Hello, I still have a few questions:

We still can't say "one of the most expensive" (yeah I know that $177 million is a lot of money, but this alone doesn't allow us to make such statements, as this is WP:OR if not backed up by a source). We do have a source that says "one of the largest", though, and you can cite it and even propose a hook based on this info. That would be fine.

I've also found a document for a historical perspective for costs here and also there are a few on Google Scholar, maybe they will help. That's optional, but I'd ask you to consider parsing through them.

Other stuff has been addressed, so do this, and we're done. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 04:38, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Ooooh, nice find with the historical document. I'll integrate that into the article. I've just fixed the wording to "largest", inc'l an explicit cite. Cheers, SiliconRed (he/him • talk) 13:17, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Given some of the fantastic comments from Szmenderowiecki, here's a proposed hook:

• ALT: ... that snow removal in Montreal is one of the largest such operations in the world, with its cost reported at upwards of C$165 million annually? Source: Montreal runs one of the largest snow-removal operations in the world. It takes an army of 3,000 workers to remove snow from 10,000 kilometres of Montreal streets each winter. That adds up to $165 million a year.

SiliconRed (he/him • talk) 14:02, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

• • Approved as proposed. Thanks for the cooperation. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 14:08, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Annual Snowfall Amount

Where did the 423 cm snowfall amount come from? ECCC says Montreal receives ~210 cm of snowfall per year on average. [1] Plustssn (talk) 16:20, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

I have no idea... must be a typo... SiliconRed (he/him • talk) 18:46, 11 May 2022 (UTC)