One day after a “snowpocalypse” hit Madison, officials declared the city streets manageable Thursday, though the streets division will still require at least two weeks to finish combating the storm’s aftermath.
Currently, all of the city’s streets are plowed, Streets Superintendent Al Schumacher said. He added the division expects to clear the plow-induced piles of snow at sidewalk corners near campus throughout the next couple of weeks.
Narrow streets with vision hazards like high snow piles at corners are the city’s primary snow removal targets. For the next several days workers will continue to clear intersections, corners and medians, Schumacher said.
While the overall process may take two weeks if not longer, Schmacher said the division aims to clear all of the city’s 1,662 bus stops within the following days. He said the stations would be cleared in a timely matter so residents could wait for buses without standing on piles of snow.
Although workers salted city roads prior to Tuesday evening, the division held off on salting roads Thursday because the colder temperatures would render the salt ineffective, Schumacher said. However, road salting will resume Friday when temperatures are expected to rise to the low 20s.
The storm also impacted the interstate, the Beltline and county highways, leaving 32 cars trapped by the snowstorm across Dane County, Dan Behrend, member of the Dane County Highway Department, said.
“Along with trying to clear roads and fighting drifting problems, we had to plow around these [stuck] vehicles, which inhibited us from getting things done,” Behrend said.
In some cases, roads were completely closed due to drifts as high as 10 feet, Behrend said.
Both Behrend and Schumacher said drifts could continue to affect city and county road snow removal if wind continues to blow more snow into the roads.
In order to effectively plow streets, Schumacher said police ticketed 148 people Wednesday for parking illegally during a snow emergency.
Schumacher said he was concerned people would forget about parking rules Thursday since the storm already blew past. He added police would be ticketing and towing illegally parked cars to help plows clear the opposite sides of streets efficiently.
