How to Deal With Snow

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mass88

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This is a discussion relating to snow removal and clearing the streets in Boston and not about mass transit. What do you feel would be the most effective way for the city of Boston to deal with major snowstorms as far as clearing roads, parking lots, etc.?
 
To borrow, but improve upon, Somerville's snow-clearing techniques, I'd like to see parking banned on odd-numbered sides of streets during and immediately after the storm, but then switch the ban to even-numbered sides of streets the following day, so plows can clear that side of the street as well. People would be required to shovel their car and move them to the opposite side of the street following a storm. It also has the positive side effect of exposing any cars who don't shovel out/are abandoned on the street, and towing them away.
 
- raise the cost of resident stickers to encourage car sharing and reduce car parking
- halve parking (Medford does this with an alternate side parking ban--parking legal on the even side of the street (in winters starting in even years, odd side the next winter)
- increase on street snow storage space by installing seasonal bike lanes (April 1 to Nov 30 that become snow farms Dec 1 to March 31
- spend parking proceeds on snow-fighting, salt, & bus shelter warmers.
- offer incentives for heated side walks and complete clearing, or tax and bid out sidewalk plowing
- encourage snow tire in season and off season change (they wear out streets too fast on dry pavement)
 
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The most annoying thing I've noticed recently is parking on the emergency arteries when the parking ban is lifted. Why do people think it's ok to block a travel lane? The parking lane on Huntington isn't plowed, so why do people get to park in the travel lane? The 39 bus has been backed up all the way to JP Center at times and the Green Line hasn't been running to Heath during the day because of it. Parking on both sides of S Huntington near Bynner after the last storm didn't even leave enough room for bidirectional travel. If you want to park on these corridors, SHOVEL OUT THE PARKING SPOT. I tried calling to have them ticketed, but the response I got was "well they didn't plow the street wide enough so where else would they park?" Who cares? We shouldn't let a few people parking like idiots gridlock entire neighborhoods.
 
Do we agree that in order for travel to win vs the snow,parking has to lose vs the snow?Free street parking has created a textbook tragedy of the commons.
 
I think we should take a proactive approach and begin animal or human sacrifices to the Snow God.
 
stellarfun said:
go to youtube, search string for video either montreal snow clearing or montreal snow removal, and you can see how its done.
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Stel -- the problem is mostly caused by plowing where there is no place to put the snow -- Plowing should be restricted to highways and parking lots as well as emergency arteries during declared Snow Emergencies while a parking ban is in effect

For the rest the preferential approach is :
  • 1 Blow the snow off the street and the sidewalk onto lawns gardens and open plazas
  • 2 Dig and remove the snow from side streets to snow farms or melters
  • 3 Melt in place or nearby to minimize transport -- need to have access to major drainage to handle the flow
 
Arlington said:
- encourage snow tire in season and off season change (they wear out streets too fast on dry pavement)
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That's only studded tires, which have largely fallen out of use as they don't provide much benefit. Normal snow tires are fine on dry pavement, although their tradeoff for being pliable in the cold is that the TIRES wear too fast in warmer weather.
 
Boston does not have the luxury of being able to tell residents to move their cars to city owned lots, or garages while crews go block by block clearing the entire street and sidewalks of snow.
 
mass88 said:
Boston does not have the luxury of being able to tell residents to move their cars to city owned lots, or garages while crews go block by block clearing the entire street and sidewalks of snow.
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What city can?
 
IIRC in Montreal they have the authority to put all the parked cars on flat beds, clear the snow, then put the cars back. I doubt that Americans would put up with that / our small claims court system would get swamped with cases of the city damaging cars during the clearing.
 
Evanston IL arranged a tow truck parade to tow all the cars on a block, and make a slow procession around the block. While gone, big snow movers cleaned back to the curb and trucked all the snow off. When done, the tow trucks finished their parade and put the cars back in order. (No violations/tickets issued, and damage to the cars was rare given that they were generously buffered by the snow piles before and widely spaced after.

This was done on midsize streets that aren't so key as to have total parking bans, but were wide enough to permit safe towing maneuver.

So it can and is done in the USA.

This was mostly done at night, 1 block at a time, on what was (at the time) Chicago's snowiest February on record, IIRC.

Note also that since it doesn't involve towing to impound, parading actually uses less tow-hours than offsite storage and uses just temporary slow rolling storage. It did help to have a strict grid. I think It would be perfect in the Back Bay and Worcester Square.
 
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Have the Nights Watch jump him before a mission and stab him to death.

That's what they should do with "Lord" Snow.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
IIRC in Montreal they have the authority to put all the parked cars on flat beds, clear the snow, then put the cars back. I doubt that Americans would put up with that / our small claims court system would get swamped with cases of the city damaging cars during the clearing.
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Boston PWD moves cars around when they need to. For instance if they are repaving a road or doing sidewalk work, they often just move the car somewhere else nearby.
 
sm89 said:
Boston PWD moves cars around when they need to. For instance if they are repaving a road or doing sidewalk work, they often just move the car somewhere else nearby.
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In that case, it should be policy for major snow clearing ops.
 
Ticket and tow if you're parked more than a foot away from the curb. That would solve 99% of the traffic issues. If you can't park near the curb, then TFB, don't park there.

Really, I'd like to see more ticketing in general. Throwing snow into the street is unacceptable, yet I see people doing it on every block. Clear your sidewalk the proper width and to bare pavement, or get ticketed every day.

Perhaps a portion of the snow related ticketing could go towards the snow removal budget. Then we could afford to buy fancy snow melters, and maybe provide public salt.



I also agree with the above on the odd/even thing, or keeping street cleaning in effect year round.
 
davem said:
Ticket and tow if you're parked more than a foot away from the curb. That would solve 99% of the traffic issues. If you can't park near the curb, then TFB, don't park there.

Really, I'd like to see more ticketing in general. Throwing snow into the street is unacceptable, yet I see people doing it on every block. Clear your sidewalk the proper width and to bare pavement, or get ticketed every day.

Perhaps a portion of the snow related ticketing could go towards the snow removal budget. Then we could afford to buy fancy snow melters, and maybe provide public salt.



I also agree with the above on the odd/even thing, or keeping street cleaning in effect year round.
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The problem with mass towing is "to where?" The city has less space to store towed cars with feet of snow on the ground, how are they going to be able to tow more cars than normal?

This might be a very solvable problem, but it is one that will be confronted.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
The problem with mass towing is "to where?" The city has less space to store towed cars with feet of snow on the ground, how are they going to be able to tow more cars than normal?

This might be a very solvable problem, but it is one that will be confronted.
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Only option I can think of is to build a tow garage, but that takes some significant capital we probably shouldn't be spending.
 
I would imagine you wouldn't have to to that many cars before the volume of people parking in travel lanes dropped.
 
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