It’s time to complain about the cities snow plowing strategy . . . the city unpredictable then blames the people who park downtown.
BUT, PEOPLE DON”T FOLLOW THE RULES!
When I was on the council myself, then Alder Satya Rhodes-Conway, Alder Marsha Rummel and perhaps others worked on improvements downtown snow emergency zone debacle.
Prior to that, for years whenever we complained about anything related to plowing the snow and ticketing downtown the city would reply with “doesn’t matter what we do, people won’t move their cars”. We consistently replied that there are a couple reasons for that:
- The rules are hard to follow. For this snow emergency the rule would be as follows: If you are parking your car for the night on the 11th, you park for the 12th. So you park on the even side of the street. It just simply isn’t intuitive – even when people try they screw up. They either have the wrong date, or miscalculate the rules.
- Sometimes there are consequences, sometimes there are not.
- When there is a snow emergency was not predictable or easy to figure out.
- You have to have a place to move your car to!
We were able to get the following changes:
- Free parking in the parking ramps (not for the hours we wanted, but its something)
- Text Alerts
- Email alerts and updates
- Consistency in the policies and enforcement
- The notification on the city website
We didn’t get as far as we wanted, but we made progress.
However, it does seem like in the past few years things have slipped – and the progress we made about consistency of the rules is lost.
NOT PREDICTABLE
I used to think the rule was that if there was three inches of snow they would plow the residential streets unless the snow was just going to melt right away. The exception is usually in the fall or spring months. Now it just seems completely random if they call a snow emergency or not. They seem to call the emergency before its done snowing and screw up their predictions quite a bit.
I used to think that when they called a snow emergency, it would be for 2 nights. Last year, twice if I recall correctly, the snow emergency was for 3 nights. This year (see below) it was just for one.
INCONSISTENT CONSEQUENCES
If you break the rules any of the following may happen:
- Nothing. No ticket, no tow.
- A ticket.
- A ticket and a tow.
Today, no tickets
sidenote: Uber ^^
AND STILL, THE STREETS DON’T EVEN REALLY GET PLOWED
In fact, I think they did more harm than good. I’d rather have the bit of the snow on the ground than the frozen hump you have to drive over to park or get out of your spot. See that parking spot behind the silver car – that’s no longer an option for my car.
It’s like moving your car for street sweeping – on Friday I messed up the parking and I thought I was was parking on the correct side of the street but I got my days mixed up . . . doh! Totally my fault. I got a $35 ticket. Oh well, another contribution to the city coffers. But . . . the maddening part is, I got the ticket but they didn’t sweep the streets.
Today, they didn’t appear to plow where the cars were moved.
The city gets it both ways. They make us comply, they ticket, and we don’t get the services!!!!
SNOW EMERGENCY CANCELED FOR TONIGHT
I WONDER IF THE MAYOR STILL CARES ABOUT THESE ISSUES
My guess is no. She was once passionate about these issues. But now, I’m guessing bus rapid transit is her only priority.
