Yeah, she’s in a gerrymandered district that surrounds but does not include St. Cloud, but she’s pretty far west of us.

Hey, Michelle Fischbach is yours too.

not sure where they put the Saint Paul cars).

The cars get towed to a lot DOWN BY THE RIVER.

Seriously. It’s on Barge Channel Road.

Here in New Hampshire, which is notorious for government cheaping out on a lot of things, snow removal is one of the few things they don’t cheap out on. State and municipal crews (counties play no role in the road system here) are out in force once the snow starts accumulating, and between storms they get rid of snow piles so that they will have somewhere to push the snow from the next storm. Most towns ban overnight street parking during the winter months for exactly this reason, and the few that don’t provide municipal lots for people to stash their cars during a declared snow emergency. The towns even plow the sidewalks, and not just the ones in front of town-owned buildings. Within a few hours after the snow ends, state roads and arterial streets are completely clear. Side roads might take a little longer, but not much.

Once a private corporation [1] is running things, you will have much better roads — and lower taxes, too!

[1] Majority owned by a consortium of Gulf State emirs.

Part of the problem with sidewalks in Minnesota is that Minnesotans believe for some reason that the way you get a sidewalk in front of your house is to buy it. Even in the cities, the cost of installation is directly covered by the land owner. Therefore, Minnesotans hold it as a right (and reasonably so, I suppose) to not have one. Same with curbs. Probably lights to, but I’m not sure, never having been in the position to buy one.

The trash pickup thing varies from city to city in Minnesota. We voted (in Coon Rapids) to have a single company contract with the city vs. we each pick our own. (We voted to each pick our own, apparently)

Closing entire highways… and withoiut coordinating it, so all forms of surface access to entire region are accidently shut down at the same time because different agencies decide to work on the roads that day.

Since there is no city “grid” — most surface streets wind in loops and go nowhere — when they highway you need is closed there is often no other way to get somewhere without nearly doubling the travel time.

OK you’re from Chigago… in the East part of the East, there is no grid, but every junction of a subterranean rocky feature (of which there are many) and moving water is a node, because it was once a mill, then a village, then a town, then a part of a city. So you can go off-highway and get anywhere. There is a grid that does go places here, it depends on where you live exactly. The grid is broken up by lakes, and there are a lot of lakes, and by railroad tracks and so on. But in California, there are regions the size of average European cities that are connected to other regions only by highway. I think of Minnesota as transitional in that way.

The on-ramps and off ramps around here seem like they were designed purely for comedy value, leading to subjectively more accidents — and closings and traffic.

On ramp? Off ramp? Are you talking about popular vs. unpopular parking garages!?!??

But yes, especailly, for instance, the east bound ramp from 35W to 694. It has a stop sign on it!

For your #10: If you live in the Western Suburbs you have a nice car and you get to use the paid-for sane lane, so you don’t need no stinking busses!

But then winter came. And I thought “This state is notorious for its winters. If anyone knows how to deal with the snow, it’s got to be Minnesota…” But no!

Hahahaah!!!!

Even Minnesotans do not understand that Minnesota does NOT in fact get much snow at all (compared to Chicago or Boston, for instance). So they think they are all ready for the snow, but if you get two or three blizzards in one year, forget it. They run out of sand or salt, the budget for removal dries up, there is no place to put the snow, etc.

The right turning lane we use to turn from 55mph State Hwy 55 into our little residential neighborhood just disappears for the winter, never plowed, so you have to shed all your speed in the same lane where the traffic behind you is going full speed. And while the roads are still icy.

Which actually makes you look just like a Minnesota driver, because a practice of Minnesota drivers is a) slow down to turning speed at least a half block before the turn and b) use the turn signal as part of the turning process, so you actually flip the signal on after the car is 1/4 pointed in the new direction in which you will be going.

“Well, maybe Minnesota drivers are just so good at snow-driving that it’s not an issue…” But no! Every morning in winter the traffic reports are full of accidents, injuries, and delays — again much worse than in the much larger Chicago metro, at least subjectively.

Conversation overheard at the grocery store last year during a storm:

“Is your boyfriend coming”

“No, this is the first snow”

“So what?”

“He crashes his pickup on the first snow every hear. His little tradition”

And the potholes that appear the next spring? Well, the huge one on our street did get fixed… in October.

Your’s got fixed?? Who did you pay off to get THAT done?

Why aren’t people clamoring to pay more taxes for these services?

Becauas they don’t know. Poll your neighbors. If they went to a larger city to spend any time at all, they were so traumatized by the event that they were not making the kind of cogent observations they would have to have been making to bring this knowledge back.

I often feel like the guy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers….

ER Doc: In terms of clearing state highways, I totally agree. But all the other stuff is cultural. (I moved here pre-Jesse, and lived in a city which was not plowed once … the entire fucking city … all winter .. for instance. I used to bring my own salt and at one particular intersession, I’d pull over 300 feet in advance, drag a bag of salt to the corner and throw it around, then walk back to my car and drive through, often passing people sitting there filling out forms becaue of the accident they just had. That was the corner of 65 and Mississippi, in case anyone remembers seeing the guy in the blue volvo with the salt bag…)