Re: [Mpls] Minneapolis Snow Plowing

[Becker]

The other couple of problems with changing the snow plowing is:   1) you already have 380,000 people trained to dance in a certain way when it snows.  Any changes means a whole bunch of people will be getting very stiff fines (+$100) because you changed the system on them.  It would be ugly, no matter how much you tried to publicize it.  2) some parts of town don't have enough on-street parking to accommodate a north-south, then east-west plow because the blocks are shorter east-west than they are north-south.  Some of these areas simply don't have enough parking regularly and when it is snow plow time, it is much much worse 3) you don't really get the streets plowed substantially faster for all the money and signs on every street   There is a way of doing this without such  a large expenditure for signs but for these other reasons I believe it was rejected.    Carol Becker Longfellow         I have heard that Mayor-Elect Rybak wants to go with a 24-Hour snowplowing system. Does anyone know how this will work? Also, I recall former Council Member Steve Minn had suggested a different method of snow removal. Does anyone recall the Minn system and how it would differ from the Rybak system or the current system? I do not know what the Rybak plan is.  But the previously proposed plan would work this way.  As soon as a snow emergency was declared, the city would begin plowing.  They would plow all the streets, curb to curb, doing north/south and then east/west.  The reason why the plan wasn't instituted is that the Mayor did not want to spend the money to install signage.  The estimated cost to sign all the streets was $1 million.  There was a lot of opposition even on the Council because a lot of members didn't like the idea that more signs would be installed.  If you don't sign, then you cannot tag cars, so the signage becomes important. /Karen Collier Linden Hills