FARGO (KFGO) – The City of Fargo is changing parking restrictions for certain parts of the city this winter.
The City has done away with night restrictions from 19th Avenue N. to 13th Avenue S. from the Red River to 25th Street. Instead, there will be one-side only parking from 12th Avenue N. to I-94 from the river to 25th Street. This also stretches into the Madison neighborhood, but does not include the downtown area.
In years past, the city did not allow people to park on either streets or avenues at night to make snow removal and cleanup easier for public works crews.
“The last year or two, I’ve been focusing on it,” Public Works director Ben Dow says. “Enforcement has been limited. We don’t really use it for snow removal anymore because we focus on downtown and arterials. So, it didn’t really make sense, other than to punish those property owners to not let them park in front of their homes during the winter months.”
Dow says the change was made after evaluating the effectiveness of the restrictions and speaking with homeowners who have been impacted by the ordinance.
“It was a huge hindrance to a lot of people,” Dow says. “Think about the people that didn’t have a street for two blocks that they could go park. So, on an avenue that was restricted, they’d have to go find a street two blocks down to park. And not everybody has the 3-stall garage with the wide driveways. There are a lot of older neighborhoods that have single-stall garages with single-stall driveways.”
Dow also says much of the snow removal is done during the daytime now. He adds that nothing is set in stone and if snow removal becomes an issue with the new ordinance, changes could be made.
“We’ll watch it,” Dow says. “We do have our Friday routes where we flip cars off the street and say, ‘you can’t park there on Friday.’ Those are the days when we go in and widen the streets and plow the streets. If we have areas that are becoming problems, we have a plan in place. What we’ll do is change the signs – and this would probably happen next summer, but I’d have to take it to the city commission for approval – that one day a week, we flip cars to the other side of the street or avenue.”
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