urbanMSP

What's the rule for shoveling when a property is on a corner lot? As far as I can tell, people in my neighborhood shovel the sidewalk in front of their houses but not to the side, which happens to be a major road and access point to the river. Is that really how it works? And if the homeowner isn't responsible for shoveling these sidewalks, who is?

Residents/owners are responsible for all sides of their property, not just the front (third bullet here: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/snow/shovel/index.htm). You can report houses that don't shovel and they'll get a letter from the city.

You can report these sorts of issues with the Minneapolis 311 iOS app:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/minneap ... d542375735

And via seeclickfix.com (the two are linked):

https://seeclickfix.com/issues/4163834

And after that start an email thread with public works, 311 and your council member

I 100% did not consider buying on a corner lot in Minneapolis because of shoveling. That's an additional ~120 feet on the side, or a quadrupling of the workload (assuming 40 feet of frontage in front). And those folks are generally responsible for clearing the adjacent corner too. No thanks.

The number of homes and establishments on corners that will clear every square inch of their sidewalk, but not one single square inch into the roadway crossing, leaving walls of ice, is a blight on the community. There is one such house near our church that does an immaculate sidewalk clearing, but refuses move one bit of the snow to cross the street.

You buy a house in the flight path, you know what you are buying.
You rent an apartment without parking, you know what you are renting.
You buy a home on a corner, with sidewalks on two sides and street crossings? You know what you signed up for.

I 100% did not consider buying on a corner lot in Minneapolis because of shoveling. That's an additional ~120 feet on the side, or a quadrupling of the workload (assuming 40 feet of frontage in front). And those folks are generally responsible for clearing the adjacent corner too. No thanks.

Eh, just buy a snowblower. All else equal, it'd be nice to not have to do that, but it doesn't seem like a make-or-break thing for choosing a house.

(Full disclosure: just a bought a house with no sidewalk. But I'd gladly shovel one if somebody wants to build it )

Honestly it's the corner crosswalk that's the pain, not the extra sidewalk frontage. And yeah, very easy with a snowblower, even my little battery operated one.

A side note, if you have an elderly neighbor please consider shoveling their sidewalk as well. You just might get a batch of fresh baked cookies.

A side note, if you have an elderly neighbor please consider shoveling their sidewalk as well. You just might get a batch of fresh baked cookies.

I can vouch for this! My grandma rewarded the people who drive her home from church with extensive tins of home-baked cookies at Christmas. There's good karma for helping older people.

I've gotten myself into a situation that's kind of funny. I have older neighbors immediately to one side, and some other older neighbors two houses down on the other side. I have a snowblower, so it would be pretty inconsiderate not to do their driveways and sidewalks. However, I feel like a jerk if I skip the middle-aged single women between me and the folks two houses down. So I've basically set the expectation that I clear FOUR drives, sidewalks, and back walkways. I'm cool with that.

Since I have a snowblower, though, the easiest way to get to the front is to simply plow a path down the alley, around the block and then do the sidewalks of the four houses as opposed to plowing grassy areas. I try to do that 'inconspicuously' by making just a single pass (i.e. "I'm not really clearing your walk, but I do have to get to the middle of the block"), but then I started getting 'Thank You's, bottles of booze, fancy bags of coffee beans, etc.. Can't exactly stop now...

Have you ever thought of yourself as an entrepreneur?

Often I look out over the well cleared sidewalks of my house and my neighbors at persistent icy masses on the street which stay there for a long time. I watch people getting out of cars wearing dress shoes struggling to stay upright. The owners of the corner properties at both ends of my block do a good job of clearing every inch of the sidewalk and a little beyond, but once you get beyond and into the street things can get pretty challenging.

The policy and it's enforcement really seem like they are done by people who get into SUV's in heated garages and drive downtown to their jobs in city hall. Anybody who's actually done some walking in urban neighborhoods would know that a lot of the journey involves walking across streets which can be ice covered for weeks on end. If you really want to make the neighborhoods walkable in the winter you have to get all the streets down to bare pavement as well.

Most egregious are the side sidewalks. So many corner houses fail to adequately clear their side sidewalk, which is bad because usually those are often major thoroughfares.

The reason I started this thread was the south side of Franklin Avenue in Prospect Park, where several corner houses have their front door to the side street. Most seemed to clear their front sidewalk, but the side sidewalks were almost always covered in snow and ice. At least one house never shoveled the Franklin side once last winter.

It's one thing for the city to be behind on enforcing a random neighborhood road that doesn't get much traffic, but roads like Franklin -- the access point between Prospect Park and the river -- should be a priority. I've noted a similar situation around some of the cross streets by the river in South Minneapolis. The streets that everyone uses to access the river are the worst shoveled.

Is Franklin a county or state aid road? Is there money there for the city or county to plow the sidewalks?

How are the streets in Prospect Park? Once you get past the sidewalk do you have to navigate across a slippery bumpy sheet of ice crossing the street? You definitely do in Whittier.