Here’s one a bit more reminiscent of my childhood, except on our street they cleared everything down to the curb and any cars parked on that side of the street were towed. Snowblower fun starts at around 5:00 minutes in the video.
Montreal stopped river dumping in the 80s I think. They now use certain collector locations throughout the city that has the snow melt routed to processing via the sewer system.
There’s a Wikipedia article about it: Snow removal in Montreal - Wikipedia
300 000 trucks, 10 000 km of city streets, 3000 workers employed during the winter, 3% of the city budget, for about $170 million.
I’m always going to be impressed by it.
Truckloads, surely, not trucks?
Yes, truckloads, sorry.
Apparently it’s about 2500 vehicles of all types.
In addition to the awesome Snow blowers, we have the sneaky sidewalk plows which are most effective at .75 the speed of light so if you hear them coming, jump aside quick!
I’ve already carved out ownership of the street with my neighbors. If I spent hrs shoveling it out and somebody down the street used it then I would shovel the recently created mound of snow away from my new space. It’s got to go somewhere.
The year of the famous Boston snow pile! It finally melted on July 14th.
Born and raised in Chicago in a house without a garage. I heartily agree with the entirety of this post.
Also, back then in the 60s-70s, they didn’t even plow the side streets. You just jumped away from the curb, into a pair of ruts…
Not snow-related as I’m in Middle England where we just don’t get those problems….my street has double-yellows on one side and a free-for-all on parking spaces on my side of the street. My neighbour (who has about six cars, and room to park all of them off-street in his driveway and yard) often puts traffic cones or his bins on the street to save spaces. The other neighbours just shove the obstacles out of the way and park there anyway.
What’s “double yellows”?
That’s beautiful, it’s like watching trucks dance together.
No parking at any time, as opposed to single yellows which is restricted parking.
I suppose it all depends on whether you think you are man enough to go kick some stranger’s ass, hope they are not a lunatic armed with a weapon of some sort, and are confident that that local law enforcement will decide to not prosecute you for assault or property damage.
Otherwise I would imagine you do what most people do in such circumstances. Yell and posture for awhile so you think you look like tough guys until one or both parties realize they are out of shape grown-ass men who probably don’t want to explain to people at work or their son’s baseball practice the next day why their face is fucked up and /or go inside and stew for a few hours.
As someone who lived in Boston for awhile, I tend to respect the informal “chair/cone rule”.
Plus a lot of those sort of neighborhoods are “resident only” parking so if one of your neighbors shovels out a spot and you take it, you are kind of being a bit of a dick IMHO.
What if you’re trying to park your vehicle in the first place?
“Dibs” has to exist to certain extent. Otherwise you get a situation where you might shovel out a spot for 45 minutes, then go get your car from where it is temporarily parked while you shovel (like in front of someone’s driveway), only to find someone has taken the spot you just finished shoveling out.
In this situation, I would be really ticked off, especially if the person refused to move. To avoid it, if I lived in an area where this was an issue, I would keep a couple of orange traffic cones in my vehicle to hold my spot while I retrieved my vehicle, or get someone to guard it.
But I agree that once you leave, the spot is fair game for anyone.
Also long time Chicago area boy. Albeit only seven years in the city itself. Wasn’t a thing in that neighborhood. But honestly when my car was parked on the street during a major storm there wasn’t much of the space itself to shovel out? It was getting the snow off my car and clearing a bit in front of and behind the car, and the wall of snow the plow pushed against it. I assumed someone else would park there soon after I pulled out.
Owning a house I tried to shovel the plow drift (or ahead of the plow so it didn’t push a drift blocking the driveway) in front of my house as my responsibility but I parked in my driveway.
I’ve lived my whole life in coastal Southern California and have only seen heavy snow a few times in my life but this is the kind of thing that would drive me apeshit. I’m fine with following whatever the local convention is but there are always people who think the local convention is bullshit or constantly nitpick their way into their advantage or never do their fair share of the work. Nothing but respect for all of the work it is to deal with that and everything else with that weather. It’s easy mode out here.
Shhh! Don’t tell anyone - remember, we are having an exodus! /s [It’s going to be seasonably 60F, clear, light breeze and sunny here today in Sacto - people are out in sweaters, golfing, riding bikes, jogging 
]
I get mildly annoyed when an unknown car parks in front of my house, but the clearing snow thing and parking would definitely take things to the next level. We can barely drive when it rains out here.
We don’t even need air conditioning in Santa Barbara
Have you ever dated? Didn’t you go to their house or have them come over? I didn’t have a spot in her neighborhood to dig out in the first place so the only place to park is where someone else dug out. Same for any type of home repair contractor; they gotta park somewhere when they come to fix/install {whatever}.
No. That’s gross. I just have sex with them in the bathroom of a dive bar like a normal person.
Soo much easier to park at the bar too; their lot has probably been plowed already!