Postby twincitizen » January 15th, 2015, 1:24 pm
Do people have any thoughts on if Minneapolis could/should move to a plowing system like St. Paul's?
St. Paul plows all of their streets in a 24 hour cycle, while Minneapolis' snow emergency takes 48 hours to complete all streets, including a 12-hour period between Day 2 and Day 3 where they are plowing nothing.
On Day 1 (aka Night 1), Minneapolis only plows their emergency routes, while St. Paul does the emergency routes and also knocks out one side of their N-S streets. On Day 2, St. Paul hits the E-W streets (both sides) and the other side of the N-S streets.
I wonder how the two cities compare on a tows per capita basis... you could probably even compare among various sectors of each city. When you think about it, it's really stupid for the two cities to have different sets of rules. Aside from the densest (aka parking deficient) Mpls neighborhoods of Stevens/Whittier/Wedge/CARAG/etc. (denser than anything comparable in St. Paul), it's tough to make a case for why the cities should have different rules. Getting the plowing done sooner (and therefore back to normal parking) would seem to outweigh any drawbacks of an intensified parking crunch during the snow emergency.
There are times when Mpls' "Day 3" plowing occurs more than 3 days after snowfall. Say it snows heavy late Sunday night. Snow emergency gets called Monday (night). Day 3 plowing is then Wednesday...when it stopped snowing at midnight Sunday. Rightfully, a lot of people find that ridiculous.