1602 Snow Emergency Parking

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Many of the municipalities around here have snow emergency condition rules. Some say that during a snow emergency (which is apparently defined as "We gotta plow the streets") you have to park only on the even side of the street until 8 pm, then switch to the odd side until 8 pm the next day, back and forth until the emergency conditions are over. At least two local towns say that during actual snow storms, there is NO parking allowed on municipal streets at all. Even during business hours.

If you screw up during a snow emergency, your car is towed.

Yeouch!

I've never lived anywhere that I didn't have a driveway or parking lot, so I don't understand at all how people cope with that.

All these municipalities have apartments upstairs over shops in the business districts, and no alleys or lots. Many people park on the street because there's no where else to park.

What do they do?

How do they know how long the SE lasts? It seems to have nothing to do with whether your street has already been cleared.

Street sides have to be switched at 8 pm. What if you work second shift? How do you move your car?

I live two miles outside my village, and I don't have the faintest idea when or whether they enforce SE parking rules. I have on occasion passed through the village at like 3 am a day or two after a storm, and have found that they block off streets and go down them with enormous machines that gobble up snowbanks and fill dump trucks, and during that operation there are no cars on those streets. Some of them are residential streets, where few houses have driveways. Where are those cars? I have this picture in my mind of the enormous augers gobbling up cars and spitting them into dump trucks.

It's not like I don't know anyone who lives with these conditions - I just forget to ask.
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