nothin 225 Ticketed, 75 Towed To Make Way For Plows | New Haven Independent

225 Ticketed, 75 Towed To Make Way For Plows

Melissa Bailey Photo

As the snow fell overnight, a dozen city workers were out in the storm, ticketing cars, ordering tow trucks, and working to establish a new standard for snowstorm parking.

The standard: Don’t park on the odd side of the street.

It’s a rule that the city has put in place during recent storms, with varying degrees of enforcement. To set the rule firmly into the New Haven psyche, the city needs to be consistent and enforce the practice, said Rick Fontana, the city’s deputy director of emergency operations.

Thomas MacMillan Photo

Fontana (pictured) made that statement at the end of a post-storm staff meeting in the Emergency Operations Center Wednesday. City officials conferred about Winter Storm Janus, which dumped 7 inches of snow in town Tuesday night.

Odd-side parking is forbidden during residential parking bans not only because it makes it easier to plow the streets, but because the city’s fire hydrants are all on the odd side of the street. Even-side parking allows plow trucks to clear the way for fire department access to the hydrants.

Mike Mohler, deputy transportation director, said he was out from 11:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. with nine traffic officers and a supervisor. Together they issued 225 tickets, Mohler said. Of those, 65 were issued downtown. The rest, 160, were handed out on posted snow routes and in neighborhoods where people had violated the ban on parking on the odd side of the street.

Mohler said his department also towed about 75 cars overnight, mostly from downtown. He said the department received no complaints about the enforcement.

Fontana said plowing was more effective with the odd-side parking ban. The ban will likely always cause some amount of confusion, he said. The city just needs to keep pushing” the message: Park on the even side and this is the way it’s always going to be.”

As we go on, we will see some behavioral changes,” Fontana said.

The city fielded 124 calls to 911 and 235 non-emergency calls overnight, which is below the average call volume. Several callers were confused about the odd-side parking ban, said a 911 supervisor. One caller reportedly complained that Willow Street doesn’t have even numbers.

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