Snow Emergency Rules - am I crazy?

[dreamshark]

So the city of Minneapolis has declared a Snow Emergency so they can plow the streets. This involves an intricate neighborhood car ballet - move your cars off the Snow Emergency Routes by 9 pm tonight, then over to the odd side of the street by tomorrow morning, then back to the even sides. Okay, that's fine. We are now being notified in multiple ways (phone, email, etc) but the notifications never include the parking rules. Instead they refer you to the website, the phone hotline or the snail mail brochure that was sent out earlier.

It is my recollection that the rules reverse themselves each year. One year they plow the even sides first, the next year they plow the odd sides first.  My neighbor insists that they ALWAYS plow the even sides first, that they have been doing it this way for the entire 11 years he has lived in Minneapolis.

Long-time Minneapolitan residents - which version is true?

And is this just another variation on the increasingly perplexing philosophical question of our times - how do we know what is true?

Comments

[pameladean]

I am pretty sure that they have been plowing the even sides first and then the odd sides for most of the time we've been living here. There have been a couple of refinements to the rules, but honestly, I think if they reversed the sides like that there would be not only more chaos than there is now but mass revolution.

Sadly, I got rid of the paper brochure for last year when this year's came in. I can check if downstairs was more dilatory, and then we'd have PHYSICAL EVIDENCE.

P.

Sorry if you get this comment twice. First LJ, having surreptitiously logged me out, said it would be marked as screened, and then said an error had occurred and it would not be posted. Talk about not knowing what is true.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Oops. Scott, I accidentally deleted your comment. Feel free to leave it again if you want to keep up your end of the conversation. I think that you're correct - they used to alternate sides of the street, but stopped doing it a few years ago. It's hard to believe that "a few years" in my mind was actually 20 years, but I suppose it's possible.

There have been other radical changes during the last 20-30 years. There were a few years where we had so much snow that Minneapolis went to one-side parking for the entire winter by special decree. Then they were so convinced that the climate had changed permanently (in the direction of more snow) that one-sided parking became "permanent," going into effect automatically after the first Snow Emergency of the winter. That lasted a few years, until somebody noticed that we were no longer getting all that much snow and it was dropped. Anybody else remember that?

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Yes, they definitely used to alternate which side of the street they plowed first every year. It was supposedly tagged to the year -- after the snow emergency routes were cleared, the odd side was plowed first in odd years, and the even side was plowed first in even years. I think it was counted from the year winter started, but it always confused me since most of the snow emergencies happened after New Year's.

Kate Worley wrote a song about the parking rules that referred to how it changed every year and closing with a line about all bets being off in St. Paul. ("First it's odd side, then even, then odd until springtime, except for emergency routes....") After just a couple of years, they dropped the "until springtime" part of the rules unless the accumulated snowfall grew so deep as to require it. So, yes, I remember when one-sided parking became permanent for the winter, and when they decided that didn't have to be the default.

I'm surprised, too, at the notion of them changing the rules 20 years ago, but I'm pretty sure they did so well before I left town and that's already been 12 years.

I'm most surprised that my search foo is turning up very little about the history of the parking regulations. This excerpt from MinnPost confirms my hazy memory that the even-odd rules first took effect a couple of years after I moved to Minneapolis in 1979:

“The snow emergency parking plan has changed in Minneapolis a couple of times,” Kennedy told me. “We had an old plan until the '60s and '70s based on North-South and East-West and parking and plowing rules, but that changed in 1982-3 after a few huge snow storms.”

The city switched to an “odd-even” system, which initially had included banning parking on one-side of the street all winter long. But after a few years, staff decided to use the single-side ban only in cases of extremely snowy winters.

“We still have it in on the books,” Kennedy told me, referring to the occasional wintertime one-side ban.

Unfortunately, Kate's song isn't on any of the music party tapes I've digitized.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU! I couldn't find anything online either except that same rather casually researched Minnpost article. I'm pretty sure that "Kennedy" isn't remembering it quite correctly. The one-side parking was not INITIALLY part of the Odd/Even system. They added that feature as a one-off halfway through a couple of particularly snowy winters (which probably WERE in the 80s). Then they made it a "permanent" feature, until a string of mild winters made that idea look ridiculous and it was abandoned.

The practice of switching the odd/even system each year was particularly nerve-wracking when it was combined with one-side parking. Depending on whether it was an odd or even year, you could end up unable to park in front of your house for an entire winter - unless you lucked out and there were no snow emergencies that year. Very stressful.

ETA: Re my meta-question of "how do we know what is true?" I love that one of your sources of truth for this issue was a Kate Worley song.

[carbonel]

Unfortunately, Kate's song isn't on any of the music party tapes I've digitized.

I have a copy of it from a music tape of Kate's music that I digitized. It's my favorite song of the collection. I can't remember ever hearing her sing it live, though.

I can send you a copy unless you think there's a better way to deal with it.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Neat! I definitely remember Kate singing it at a Minicon music party and would love a copy of it.

If it's small enough to send in email, great. Otherwise...Dropbox?

Also, if I haven't previously given you the link to the music party tapes I've digitized and you'd like it, please send email to gfs [at] toad-hall [dot] com using the email address you'd like me to send the Dropbox link to.

(This offer applies to other Minneapolis music party regulars -- audience members as well as musicians -- as well as carbonel.)

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

ME!

K. [please]

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

B. and I were discussing this question on the way to your house tonight, because we didn't want to park where we might get ticketed.

And we realized that the last time I lived on a "green" or "brown" street was the winter of 1993-1994, and we had no clue what the parking rules are.

I have had off-street parking everywhere I have lived in MPLS since the winter of 1985-1986, which also doesn't help me retain these important details.

K.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

By the time the party started it was safe to park anywhere, as the plowing was done for the day. Things got WAY easier to deal with when the city of Minneapolis finally conceded that once today's side of the street is plowed it is okay to park there. For years they insisted that this would never work because how could people be expected to tell if the street had been plowed or not? To which argument the residents kept saying, "If nobody can tell whether the street has been plowed, perhaps you need a different plowing crew?" Finally the City Council relented and modified the law. So if a north-south street has clearly been plowed to the curb it is okay to park there no matter what day it is.

And so far this year the snow plow crews have been great. In both snow emergencies our side was very neatly plowed by 2pm. They even did a good job cleaning up the corners.

[mplsfish.livejournal.com]

I thought about this post while parking yesterday. I was on Aldrich in uptown and both sides were parked in pretty solid. The street didn't appear to have been plowed at all but the snow was well packed from all the cars. I was only going to be there two hours so I thought the risk to me among all those cars was minimal. And I didn't get a ticket. But I wonder how people manage in those crowded neighborhoods.
I remember the year of one sided parking all year. After the snow we got a stupidly warm February rain that added an inch of ice to the packed snow. Fun to walk in. I didn't own a car at the time. It must have been about 94.