[mikeash]

We knew the storm was coming days before. Snow emergency routes are posted and publicly known. People's cars couldn't be stuck there due to the snow unless they failed to move their cars before the storm like they were required to do. This failure makes it much harder to clear important roads and impedes emergency services. Ticketing these people seems entirely appropriate to me.

[ChuckMcM]

This is what my friends in DC feel as well. There was a lot of lead up to the storm, and well before it hit you could have moved your car elsewhere. But people were "betting on the come" as they say in Craps and they were parking there assuming that either a) they would be able to move if it snowed, and b) if it snowed so much that they couldn't move well the city would have bigger problems than ticketing them.

If the law is amended, it should be amended to read "It is illegal to park on a snow emergency route at time time during and 24hours before a snow emergency. A snow emergency exists when the city declares it." Then the city could announce the emergency before the snow started, and start warning people, and then start ticketing people, and ideally by the time the snow hit there would be few if any cars in the emergency snow lanes.

[Bedon292]

The emergency did go into effect before the snow actually fell. Not 24 hours before, but most of the ticketing and towing was right before or immediately after the snow started falling.