RESOLUTION URGING REVISION OF THE WINTER OVERNIGHT PARKING BAN
WHEREAS, December 1 of each year marks the beginning of great frustration for residents who depend on overnight parking along certain thoroughfares when the Winter Overnight Parking Ban begins; and
WHEREAS, The Chicago Department of Transportation's website states, "In order to ensure that the most critical roadways in Chicago are kept open to full capacity at all times, the City of Chicago instituted and vigorously enforces a Winter Overnight Parking Ban on 107 miles of vital arterial streets from 3:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. between December 1 and April 1, regardless of snow".
WHEREAS, Since 1886, when the City of Chicago began recording significant snowfalls, there have been 41 winter storms that have produced snows of 10 inches or more. 10-inch snowfalls occur about once every 3 years. 15-inch snows occur approximately every 19 years; and
WHEREAS, It was shortly after the 4lh largest snowfall in Chicago's history occurred in 1979, a storm that changed the political landscape of Chicago forever, the Winter Overnight Parking Ban was created. Having no parked cars on a street allows plows to push the snow onto the parkways thus clearing critical municipal arteries as quickly as possible; and
WHEREAS, While there may have been good and provident reasons for declaring these particular 107 miles of streets as priority arterial routes in 1980, much has changed in the intervening 34 years. Additionally, advances in meteorological technology in which the city has invested makes predictive models far more accurate making advanced warning of a major snow event far more possible than it was back then; and
WHEREAS, It is incumbent upon this legislative body to authorize a review for purposes of updating and codifying any changes (as this practice appears to have been enforced at the discretion of various commissioners in the more than three decades since it was instituted) or eliminating the Winter Overnight Parking Ban altogether; now therefore
BE IT RESOLVED, That we, the undersigned members of the City of Chicago City Council, gathered this 10th Day of December, 2014 AD, do hereby urge the Committee on Transportation and Public Way to establish a subcommittee to study the 34-year-old Winter Overnight Parking Ban and the current 107 miles of city thoroughfares deemed as priority arterial routes in order to prepare recommendations and draft reasonable regulations that take into account all affective changes that have taken place since the ban was established.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That suitable copies of this resolution be prepared and presented to Rebekah Scheinfeld, Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Transportation and the Honorable Anthony Beale, chairman of the Committee on Transportation and the Public Way.