The snow season is now in full swing, and that means drivers in Minneapolis should make sure they are ready to find out if a Snow Emergency is in effect and know where to park. An improved Snow Emergency app will help them do that. The app now accesses the same interactive street lookup map that’s on the City website, which shows where drivers can park on each of the three days of a Snow Emergency. Drivers will be able to use their smartphones’ location services function to find out if the street they’re on has any Snow Emergency parking restrictions.
The Minneapolis Snow Emergency app is an update of the app that was first introduced in 2012. This year’s revision, available for iPhone and Android devices, uses location services information to approximate the user’s location on the Snow Emergency street lookup map. If there’s a Snow Emergency in effect and a driver wants to know if it’s OK to park on the street, all he or she has to do is open the app, click on “parking maps” and then open the map for that day of the Snow Emergency. The app will then mark the driver’s approximate location on the map, showing in red where “no parking” areas are in effect. The updated app does not send push notifications, but signing up for a text alert will essentially accomplish the same thing. Those who downloaded last year’s version of the app should update it to the current version.
When a Snow Emergency is declared in Minneapolis, parking restrictions take effect so crews can plow more than 1,000 miles of streets from curb to curb. That’s the equivalent of 3,200 “lane miles” of streets that need to be plowed—enough to plow a lane from Minneapolis to Anchorage, Alaska. Snow Emergencies are typically declared after significant snowfall and before 6 p.m. on any given day. Once declared, the Snow Emergency parking restrictions begin at 9 p.m.
