Politics & Government

UPDATE: Residential Streets Cleared, Crews Continue Downtown Cleanup

Stick with Patch to follow the progress of the plows.

UPDATE, 5 a.m: Residential roads completed. Crews still busy cleaning up downtown and a few dead end streets.

9:30 p.m.:
Streets are cleared through Section 12. Sections 7 through 11 are in progress. Can't see the map? Click here for a link. 

5:15 p.m.:
Sections 16 and 17 are now clear. Crews are now working on sections down to Section 13. 

4 p.m.:
Sections 37 through 22 and 19 are done. Sections 21 through 16 are in progress. 

11:50 a.m.:
Sections 26 and 23 are clear.

10:45 a.m.:
Section 28 is cleared. Sections 27 to 23 are in progress. 

8:30 a.m.: 
After a slight glitch, we're on track this morning to track plowing in the city. Residential plowing began last night in Royal Oak's north end at 9:30 p.m. Sections 29 through 37 are cleared and the next five sections are being worked on this morning.

Wednesday, 4 p.m.:
 Patch will be tracking the progress of Royal Oak's efforts to clear residential streets of snow over the next 36 hours with our new snow tracking map. 

As always, main roads are the first priority in Royal Oak. Once the main roads are salted, plowed and considered safe to drive on, the plows move into the neighborhoods.

Greg Rassel, director of the Department of Public Service doesn't expect plows to head into residential sections of town until after 5 p.m. Patch expects to have one or two progress updates later tonight and will shade areas completed in gray on the attached map so residents get a sense of when plows may be headed toward their neck of the woods.

As a reminder, snow Emergency conditions mean vehicles on residential streets are to be removed or will be towed. Vehicles are to remain off the streets until plow trucks have gone through the area. The Royal Oak Police Department begins issuing tickets six hours after a snow emergency is called, in order to give people a reasonable amount of time to move their vehicles.

In addition, due to the amount of snow that is currently piled along the curbs and the inability of the underbody plows that we have been using to push the snow any higher, we will be switching to front plows. The positive of that move is the snow will be pushed closer to the curbs and the streets will widen up a bit. The downside is that the front plows push the snow farther and higher, so the possibility of snow being pushed onto the sidewalk and further up the driveway approach is a very real scenario.

Also it should be noted that any cars left on the street will be buried behind more snow than in the previous snow falls this season, so digging one out will be much harder than it has been.


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