YES! Yes, yes, yes, yes! They plow, and salt, and sand, and the day after a big dump–the snow is cleared! From all streets! Well, maybe two days after, in the case of residential streets that go nowhere, but you get the idea.
I talk about this to my friends here in Alberta, and they don’t believe it. But it’s true, as I’m sure the Ontario and Quebec Dopers will attest.
Toronto (my home town) is the same. I’d see small piles of dirty snow melting at the dump site in the Don Valley, in July. There were other dump sites, of course, but I used to pass that one daily, on my way to work.
“Unless?” I’m not sure I’ve ever spent a winter in a prairie city without those friggin’ ruts - you can hardly get into them, and once in, you can hardly get out again. And God forbid you should meet someone coming the other way - then you have to try to each climb out of the ruts and pass each other.
You’re forgetting that I live on a bus route. 
I virtually never have to drive on unplowed streets.
Speaking as someone who drove a succession of Datsuns, Toyotas and Volkswagens in the 70s, it was also a pain in the ass that the ruts created by all the North American Land Yachts were too wide for my car to get its tires into both ruts. A friend once commented that driving behind me made him think of a dog trying to take a pee and being dragged off by its master. I just got used to driving with one side of the car 8 inches higher than the other.
We always have lots of snow on our street - we’re right behind Canada Olympic Park.
I’m convinced we get some of the snow they are always making - it blows our way if the wind is right.
We are rutless currently, but it’s only a matter of time. Could be worse - just across the street from us they can’t part in front of their house or they’ll get stuck. They have to take a good run at the driveway, too. Just the way the street dips, and where the snow collects when it blows around.
Do the ruts cause damage or premature wear and tear on vehicles?
Heh - I forgot about that particular pleasure of winter driving. 
-42ºC with the windchill today. I’m keeping myself warm with my burning anger at the thought of Northern Piper and family in Hawaii.
No worse than the bear trap potholes in Toronto, or the nids d’autruche in Montréal… (Yeah, I know, the proper expression is ‘nids de poule’.)
See? We’re not the only ones benefitting from our holiday!
Heavy rain in the night, and it looks like more on the way, so we may go for a drive instead of hanging out on the beach. decisions, decisions…
It’s possible some very small towns don’t but anyplace I’ve ever lived plowed all streets. It’s a basic municipal service.
Snow is not, however, hauled away from most streets, despite what Spoons said. It may be hauled away from major city streets, but on residential streets it’s simply pushed off the street and left on people’s lawns. No city in Ontario actually hauls away the snow from every street.
That’s the difference - Montreal does haul it away from every street. Ottawa does haul it away from some streets, but not all.
It costs a small fortune: about $145 million dollars is earmarked for snow clearing operations, with the actual truck loading/removal being the most expensive bit. Keep in mind that this is an Island…there’s no real alternate way around a lot of snow, and the roads here are often very, very narrow.
By contrast, Toronto has a snow operations budget of about $82 million dollars (2011).
Ottawa:$69 million(2010)
Calgary seems to be about $37 million
St John’s NFLD: $14.9 million.
And now I’m tired of Googling random cities.
Would you mind cross-referencing that with average snowfalls, too? 
I would mind, very very much. I also have no intent to cross-reference with population, kilometers of roads and sidewalks and surface area, nor to look into equipment and staff numbers or percent of city-vs-contractor work.
Obviously these factors all come into play, but it’s pretty clear that the actual hauling away of snow is an expensive thing to do, and the overall budgets reflect that. I didn’t really have a bigger point than that - I was just curious to compare numbers but then got bored doing so!
I always called them underground parking.
Calgary - 50" of snow 37 million - 0.74 milion/inch
Toronto - 52" of snow 145 millions - 2.79 million/inch
Ottawa - 93" of snow 69 millions - 0.74 million/inch
Montreal - 86" of snow 145 millions - 1.69 million/inch
St. John’s - 127" of snow 15 millions - 0.12 million/inch
But really a lot will depend on road density and city area. For example Calgary and Ottawa spend comparable amounts per inch and are roughly the same population but Ottawa covers 2800 km[sup]2[/sup] compared to Calgary’s 730.
Maybe things have changed. They never hauled the snow away from our residential street after every snowfall, true; but they would haul it away two or three times a season. Usually when the snowbanks got too big to allow for parked cars and traffic.
Bonus points for whoever can name the 900’ Michigan ski hill that averages 273" of snowfall each winter. Yes, Michigan.
Little Switzerland?
Good try – it was/is the highest ski hill in that end of the state, but is still shy by 675’ vertical 200" of snow.
Right. As mnemosyne states, it costs a fortune to haul the snow away. Roughly 10x as much to remove snow as to clear it, according to what I’ve heard from multiple sources. But you can’t get away with plowing without hauling out here, because after you’ve cleared twice without removing, you’ve rendered either the sidewalks impassable or the parking lane unusable until April. On the other hand, if my experience in Ann Arbor was at all indicative of southern Ontario, between the salt and periodic warm spells, no specific snow was likely to last more than a month or so, making the piles left after plowing less of a concern.
So, either increase the snow removal budget by a factor of 5 or so to plow & haul the residential streets, or just let the traffic pack the snow down and spread some sand on it. The options in between these two seeming extremes are all worse.