Winter Driving or why my commute takes twice as long

Dear City of Minneapolis,

I know, budget cuts SUCK.

So take this grumbling in light of the fact that I know you've cut down on plowing to save a buck or two.

And that over Christmas, when we were getting dumped on day after day, you really didn't want to pay drivers triple time to plow the roads over the holidays. I get that. But the problem is...I still have to live here.

You see, there is a 3 foot tall hump of ice to turn right onto 47th St from France Ave now, and unless I take it at 2 mph it likes to grate against the bottom of my poor little Civic, and that's not very nice. And the dumbasses behind me with their big SUVs and four-wheel drives honk loudly when they see me come to what seems to be a complete stop in order to turn onto my street.

Since I-94 is a parking lot in the evenings as I attempt to come home from work, I leave the comfort of stop-and-go traffic to take my chances on city streets. Usually I'd rather sit at a stoplight with opportunities of actual movement between stoplights than sit on a highway that's supposed to be 55 mph but is actually 10. Except now I also have to account for which streets may or may not be clear of ice and snow as I attempt to pick my route through the city streets.

On the remainder of the city streets, the non-emergency routes which did NOT get plowed for 4 days over Christmas, my poor suspension squeaks and pops if I go more than 10 mph and God help me if I leave the two wheel groove that goes in the middle of the road, or I am in even-bumpier-ville.

But sometimes I need to leave those two-lane grooves, because there is this thing called ON-COMING TRAFFIC, see, you know, cars coming toward me on a street that's supposed to be two-way? And I understand that you couldn't get ALL the snow off the street, and that people have the right to park on both sides of the street even still, but when they do that only allows one car to pass at a time. Which means I either have to leave the grooves and pull over to the side, or wait within the grooves for the other car to pass and then hope to God I can get traction to get started again within the ice grooves that our roads have turned into.

My saving salvation, Portland Ave S, which I take for approximately 5 miles south, used to be a nicely moving 3-lane one-way street. But now it's a 2 and three-quarters one-way street, with the poor people who have to park their cars on that street wondering which is worse: parking their car into the snowbank or taking a chance that someone might sideswipe their car if they park it just a little, itty bit into the driving lane. So now it's a game of bob-and-weave between drivers attempting to use the farthest right-hand lane and the middle lane, wondering if the car moving next to you is going to have to drive in your driving lane in order to avoid a parked car.

Just in case you think I'm alone in thinking that the roads are worse than they've ever been this winter, I am obviously not alone:

Don't Like MN weather? Too bad! (Star Tribune)
Anybody Seen Our Roads? (St Paul Pioneer Press)

And now that it's been below zero and in the single digits, there isn't a damn thing we can do about it until it warms up enough to allow the salt and chemicals to do their job. But even after it turns into slop and slush, I suspect that it will just continue to sit there on our roads, creating deep, icy ruts when it finally re-freezes, unless you once again fire up the snowplows and get the damn stuff off the roads while it's still movable.

So please, find something else to cut -- got some extra legislative aids who are not earning their keep working 60 hrs a week for $10/hr? Cut those slackers and plow our roads.