Fun in the snow

Vivek's already posted about all the fun we had with the snow last Sunday, but since then we've had two more snow storms come through our area. Thankfully today's storm was just a dusting. The one last Tuesday, however, wreaked havoc on traffic in the Twin Cities. It wasn't a big storm, but somehow it shut this great northern city down for a couple hours. Click here for an article on it from the local paper.

The basic point of the article seems to be that there were two problems: the missing bridge and misplaced priorities of the traffic cops. Apparently, they were too busy issuing parking tickets and getting cars towed to bother with directing traffic through the first major rush-hour snowstorm without the I-35W bridge. Hmm...I wonder what motivated that decision.

Ok, I can guess. (It's rant time.) For those of you who don't know, Vivek and I have learned the hard way that Minneapolis is a tow-happy city. Early in October we noticed that Vivek's car was missing, and we eventually located it in the city's impound lot. That's when we learned that if you leave your car in the same parking spot for more than three days (and a friendly neighbor complains), they can tow it away. And the cost to you? ~$200. Then, early in November we learned that the city will also happily tow your car if you leave it on the street during street cleaning season. It would be hard to argue with that if it wasn't for the fact that they don't post ANY notices about street cleaning until 24 hours before they clean the streets. So if you don't drive your car to work, and don't walk by your car on your way to the bus stop and back, they'll tow it. Cost to you? ~$200

No wonder there were no traffic cops around to do their job - they had to go make a lot of money for the city and tow companies. Apparently they towed about 1400 cars in the first two days after Saturday's snow storm.

Since I don't drive this meant that I had to wait for the bus for a very, very long time Tuesday. One of the things that I like about this city is that tons of people take the bus. It's great! On Tuesday though it was a bit problematic, because when my bus showed up so many people got on it that there was no room for me (I should have been pushier). This is remarkable because the bus was a double bus - the kind that bends in the middle and has about twice as many seats as a standard bus. By the time the bus left our stop it was packed with people. People were even (gasp!) standing in front of the white line! Anyway, there was no room for me, so I waited another 40 minutes to catch a bus that could get me within a couple miles of home.

When I got to the bus stop there were so many people there that I had to take a picture (thanks cell phone!) I wasn't able to get all of the bus stop, so this should just give you a taste of what it was like. The other pictures are of the crazy gridlock on the other side of the street, and no traffic on my side of the street.