Duluth’s first snow emergency, how well did the new system perform?

It was the first Duluth snow emergency called Tuesday that caused people to move their cars for the plows to clear the street curb to curb but there was a lot of first time stress for a lot of people.

Resident Brooke Heikkila says, “I was worried that I parked my car on the wrong side of the street so it was a little stressful."

With cars being moved around, new routines had to be made, which caused a shortage of convenient parking spots.

Heikkila says, "My street was a lot busier, I’ve had to park far away from my house pretty recently. I think the snow is just taking up the whole [non-snow emergency] street and then all the other spots are taken by the people that can’t park on the snow emergency routes."

But other than the stress, the city says for the first one it went pretty well. We talked to Kate Van Daele, the Public Information Officer, who was content with how things went.

She says, “Honestly I think everything has been going about as well as we can expect it to be. Our plows have been out all night long they came in as a full crew at 2:00am this morning. And all of the mains are done. We finished the residential streets ahead of time which is fantastic.”

While the city is also reminding people of a crucial rule for when the streets are first cleared. From when the snow emergency is declared you cannot park on the street from 9:00pm to 6:00pm that day. Even if the street is already plowed clear, the plows still need to make more runs.

Van Daele says, “So obviously there were some cars that were towed last night. There were certainly not a lot of tows there were more tickets from what we are seeing right now.”

And as the emergency went on feedback was rolling in. The city of Duluth says they are listening and taking things into consideration to make things easier for the second snow emergency go-around.