We’re enacting a snow ban parking ordinance. We’re a small town and we haven’t needed one, but now there’s a family in town with too many cars, not enough garage or driveway space. So they leave cars on the street. This gives the snowplow operator fits.
We’re trying to make the ordinance simple and reasonable. What do you think of this:
“No person shall park, abandon, or leave unoccupied any motor vehicle on any street in the City of It Snowed Last Night! during a snow event until the street has been plowed on both sides, from curb to curb. A snow event is defined as snowfall accumulation of two inches or more.”
I see problems. What if it snows two inches while you’re at work? What if it snows overnight and the snowplow comes through at 5 a.m. and you don’t get up until 8 or 9? What’s “two inches”? Two inches on the ground or the weatherman’s two inches, which is different than ground cover.
Do you folks have a set time for the snowplows to start, when it’s snowing? You could work a time around that if it’s a set time. Do you regularly get large accumulations, or is it a seldom thing?
I’ve seen some parking bans that don’t allow street parking between midnight and 6 or 8am on nights when there is either snow, or expected snow. I’m not sure how well that would work for your community. That might be a little much if you’re a very small town, but it seems fairly reasonable to me.
The best thing to do is look at the regs that other towns have already enacted.
You could also put the empahsis the other way, where rather than trying to define a snow event, you define it in terms of harm. “It shall be unlawful to park a vehcile ona public road such that it interferes with snow plows.”
That makes it up to the citizen to do whatever it takes for them to stay away from the possiblity of interfering, and it’s up to the city to simply take note of interferance when ithappens & issue citations accordingly.
Our small town has a winter parking ban that is regardless of whether or not it snows. Here’s the text:
We got hit with a ticket once last year, on a night it didn’t snow. I called the police station and explained the them that we’d decided to take a taxi home because we’d had a few drinks. The officer was very nice about it, said we did the right thing, and since it hadn’t snowed that night he’d forgive the ticket. So they do bend the rules a little bit, but had it snowed I think we’d have been out $50.
Around here the easiest ordinances to keep straight, ban all parking on one side of the street from a date to a date. The side you park on is tied to the date. Include the ability to tow the offending vehicles if they need to be.
Yeah, we did that. The hard part is letting people know when to get off the street.
A much larger town nearby has the odd-even numbered days parking rule, but that still leaves one side of the street snow-covered.
Some of our streets are so narrow that a fire truck would have trouble getting through unless both sides of the street are clear.
Athena, I like that one – no winter on-street parking between 1 and 6 a.m. I think we could extend that to 8 a.m. and accommodate the snowplow operator.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I’ll take them to the next meeting.
So you’re imposing a new town ordinance because one family has one or two extra cars? Has anyone just spoken to them and asked what they think they could do to help solve this problem? Is passing a new law the only or best option?
commasense, that’s our feeling too – an ordinance for one family?
The family in question isn’t cooperative. I don’t know how many cars they have. Today there were two in a double garage, one under a carport, one in the back yard, and one on the street that hasn’t been moved for a week, and we’ve had snow. I’ve seen three or four cars parked on the street in addition to those, but I assume those are visitors. Oh, and they have a pick-up with a snowblade on it.
Last summer the city clerk sent them a letter about a car with no tags, asking them to get it off the street. No response. The mayor went to the house, after he saw someone go inside. No one would answer the door. The mayor finally had a cop from the next town over go to the house with him. (We don’t have a police department.) They still didn’t get the car off the street so we had it towed.
We’re actually doing three ordinances because of this family – one for the snow ban, one for abandoned/inoperable vehicles, and one for parking too close to stop signs, fire hydrants, and intersections.
My home town has an overnight parking ban from 11pm to 7am from November 1 to April 15 (I think… I’m not sure about the am time and the date, but that’s roughly it) regardless of whether it is snowing. That town does mostly snow plowing, where snow is just pushed off the road onto the curb/property of residents.
Montreal does things differently, due to the amount of people that park on the streets (not much private parking here!). When the snow is just plowed, your car can and will be covered in snow requiring you to shovel it out when you need it. Thing is, Montreal also does snow removal where they come by with a large snow blower and truck and literally pick the snow up off the street and truck it away. For these operations, the city posts bright orange No Parking from 19h-7h or 7h-19h and during that 12 hour period you have to find another place to park or your car will be towed, often to another random street in the area, with a nice hefty fine for it. They usually do one side of the street at a time, so it’s a 2-day pain in the ass for residents! The city makes many of it’s parking lots free during snow removal.
By the sounds of it, the Montreal method probably isn’t an option, but if you make the whole process enough of an expensive PITA for people who don’t comply, perhaps they’ll get rid of some of those extra cars?
And you mentioned cars in the back yard - I used to live in a town in which is was illegal to park a car on grass/yards/anywhere that wasn’t actually a road or driveway. That could be something worth looking at too for this family?
Do what they used to do in the town where I grew up: if you left your car in the street, you got plowed in (I think the plow operators took pleasure in that) and had to shovel yourself out of a few feet of highly compacted snow. People learned pretty quick.
They have overnight parking there? I’m in the next suburb north of you (IIRC), they only time we can park overnight on the street is friday to saturday and saturday to sunday. Also, I grew up in WFB and IIRC you can’t park overnight on any night there.
If a street is too narrow for an emergency vehicle to pass with parked cars, make it a fire lane with 24-hour tow away zone for the entire street. You won’t need snow as an excuse.
If the street allows enough room for an emergency vehicle to pass with parked cars on one side, allow one side parking only. Enforce an odd-even winter storm rule so that every other night the entire road must be free, or get towed.
If the street allows enough room for an emergency vehicle to pass with parked cars on both sides of the street, just enforce an odd-even winter storm rule.
Growing up in Wisconsin we had odd-even snow parking rules. If you were stupid enough to park on the wrong side, you got plowed in. Later the police would come by, determine the owner of the vehicle and a ticket would be issued. If the vehicle still wasn’t moved, city workers came out, dig out the vehicle (at a charge of about $50 per linear foot) and had the vehicle towed right then and there. Anyone stupid enough to wait that long had to pay the ticket, pay the dig out fees and the tow fees (storage fees, too?) just to get their vehicle back.
I suggested this but it didn’t fly. If cars are parked on both sides of the street, the fire truck can’t get through without doing some damage. I’m going to keep bringing it up until they agree with me, or until my term ends.
I think this, or the snow ban from November to April rule, would be the most workable.
Thanks again, everyone, for the great suggestions. Up next: Unleashed dogs and loud music! Oh, and people peeing on the playground equipment.
If it’s that much of a problem, and not just a rare exception to the norm, consider alternate-side parking. In Buffalo and the inner ring suburbs where densities are high and on-street parking is a must, parking is only allowed on one side of the street for four days of the week, and the other side during the remaining three days. There’s usually a two-hour grace period during the switchover; I remember it being between 5:00 and 7:00 PM.
With alternate-side parking, plows will be able to get down at least one side of the street. If the storm lasts long enough, the alternate side switchover may take place in the duration, and the other side of the street can get plowed.
Since the troublemaking family isn’t paying much attention to local officials or laws, I suggest, in addition to whatever snow plan you implement, adding another ordinance that states that snowplow drivers cannot be sued or held liable for “accidental” damage to cars that are parked in violation of the rules.
We have a fairly simple solution here - some streets are designated as “snow routes” (these would be roads that need to be plowed, main streets and feeders thereto). They are signed as such, and when there is a current need or an impeding need (basically, if it is snowing now or snowed within the last 12 hours) then the city announces that there is a “snow event” and it is illegal to park or stand a vehicle on those streets. Immediate tow, no dicking around.
The city announces the snow events on the radio and on their web site. The advantage is that you dont have to depend on some “magic time of day” - you can get the plows out without waiting for 3:00 am or whatever. And otherwise, people can still park.
elmwood, we talked about the 3 day/4 day alternate parking, but on-street parking is only an issue in the winter, and just for this one family. We want to keep the rules to a minimum, since we don’t have the manpower to enforce them. This duty falls on the mayor, and he’s in his 70’s.
Geekboy, we talked about that too and it didn’t get any support. One issue is that the snowplow operator has a full-time job out of town. He moves snow for us before and after he goes to his other job, using his own equipment. The town’s small enough that he can do all the streets in just a few hours and still make it to his regular job. He can’t wait around for cars to be moved or towed (and he’s our tow guy too). We need to accommodate him as much as we can, without causing hardship on citizens. If he decided it was too much trouble, I don’t know what we’d do. I suppose we could get someone from another town to do it, but it wouldn’t get done as quickly.
commasense, good idea. We’ll run that by our lawyer.
As long as the car is operable – four tires, current tags, an engine – this is okay. So far.