Niles crews work to remove the snow from downtown streets Wednesday afternoon. Submitted photo

At least one Niles business owner was worried Wednesday about the snow ridges piling up high in the streets of downtown Niles.

Brett Ellison, owner of Hibiske’s Barbershop on N. 2nd Street, said the snow was getting to the point where it was becoming a safety hazard.

“My biggest thing was people were driving down the wrong side of the road because they couldn’t cross over — someone could get into an accident,” Ellison said. “I just want downtown to be as safe as it can be.”

Joe Ray, Niles Public Works director, said downtown Niles roads should be free of snow by the end of Wednesday assuming no additional snowfall.

He said his crews planned to begin removing snow ridges at around 4 a.m. Wednesday, but additional snowfall caused them to have to plow again, pushing the schedule back several hours.

“The weather doesn’t always cooperate,” Ray said.

The reason the city plows snow to the center of the street, Ray said, is because the city doesn’t want to plow the snow onto the merchant’s sidewalks.

When the snow lets up, street crews use a large snowblower mounted on the front of a front-end loader to blow snow into a dump truck. The snow is then hauled to

Niles Street Department crews began picking up the snow early Wednesday afternoon using a snowblower mounted to the front of a front-end loader. From there, the snow is blown into the back of a dump truck and hauled to a parking lot behind the old safety building in Riverfront Park.

“We dump it down there and then in the spring it melts,” he said.