Roadguy spent yesterday afternoon writing this story about snow emergencies and about how, despite multiple efforts to get drivers to move their cars, Minneapolis still ends up ticketing as many as 10,000 vehicles and towing 1,500 to 2,000. Hotlines, phone calls, web pages, e-mails, text messages, mailed brochures, cable television, even a PDF that you can print out and post in your apartment building to notify your neighbors — the city does at least try to let people know.

The city doesn’t really make any money on towing, the snow removal chief told me — it’s break-even at best and may not even be that. He said they really, really just want the cars out of the way so they can clear the road. And yet all sorts of people (well, OK, the sorts of people who don’t have offstreet parking) end up at the impound lot and face not-insignificant fines and fees.

Might anything else be done to get vehicles out of the way and prevent this seemingly inevitable cycle? Share your thoughts (and any other snow emergency venting, of course) below.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 6:05 am and is filed under Main, Transportation conversations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.