Portland has seen an uptick in complaints about unplowed streets and cars that weren’t towed during parking bans. Plows can’t clear the city’s streets after snowstorms if drivers don’t move their cars, leaving piles of snow, like the ones above on Sherman Street on Tuesday, that force cars to park farther into the road, constricting already narrow roads. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

Narrow one-ways. Roads shaped like half-pipes. Parking, parking and reparking. It’s plow season in Portland.

As a series of midwinter snowstorms have blanketed the city’s peninsula over the last two weeks, some residents have complained that the city seems to be doing a lackluster job clearing the roads compared to previous years. They point to snowbanks that pour off curbs, arcs of snow where plows drove around parked cars and a back-to-back downtown parking bans Sunday and Monday nights as evidence.

Michael Parker lives near the intersection of Cumberland Avenue and Casco Street — just on the edge of the yellow parking zone.

“All these streets are really narrow,” Parker said after he parked his car Monday evening. He gestured up the hill toward the Old Port, deeper into the yellow zone. “It gets a little crazy around here.”

Up Casco Street, cars filled both sides of the street around 8 p.m. Some were parked at odd angles, further narrowing the drivable portion of the road. All through downtown, piles of gray snow stood tall on sidewalk corners.

Portland officials, for their part, note that the city has seen a significant amount of snowfall in a relatively short window, making it harder for crews to keep up. Portland saw more than a foot of snowfall in just a few days last week, following a relatively dry start to the winter.

City spokesperson Jessica Grondin, who sends out parking alerts, said this year’s first parking ban, on Thursday, Feb. 6, was the latest she has seen in more than 10 years on the job.

“We’re now probably getting what we would have gotten over the last three months all in like a two-week period,” Grondin said.

She also said there are more cars on Portland streets than there used to be in general and, with that, “more people taking their chances, for sure.”

Late snow, lots of it

So far, Portland has seen two complete parking bans, the second of which came Sunday, and a yellow-zone ban on Monday, which applied only to the downtown streets. Portland provides more than a dozen lots for those who need to move their cars.

Drivers had to park in unplowed snow along one side of Grant Street in Portland on Tuesday. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

During the ban last week, the city issued 177 parking tickets and had 99 cars towed, officials said. During the Sunday ban, 115 cars were ticketed and 72 towed; 120 cars were ticketed and 104 towed during the yellow-zone ban on Monday.

Still, dozens of complaints of unplowed streets and cars that escaped towing poured into Portland’s 311 system in the hours after each ban.

“Our street has not been cleaned and we have significantly less parking spots because people did not abide by the snow ban and the city did not tow their cars to plow,” one Parkside resident wrote in their report. “Please tow their cars & finish the job.”

Other residents, including those walking the streets Monday night and commenters on social media, lamented a perceived lack of towing.

“Where I live in my neighborhood, they don’t actually tow,” said one yellow-zone resident who declined to provide her name after parking in a local church lot Monday night.

Portland relies on a handful of private contractors to tow vehicles that violate parking bans, but those companies are not compelled to provide any specific level of service, Grondin said.

“The level of enforcement is directly based on how many tow truck operators show up,” Grondin said. “We can’t make them stay, it’s up to them.”

Once towed, vehicles are taken to the city’s impound lot along Commercial Street. All told, getting towed can cost vehicle owners between $210 and $290 depending on the equipment used.

Despite popular belief, the city does not receive any revenue from towing fees, Grondin said.

Portland-based Yaz Towing picked up a large share of towed cars during the latest bans, Grondin said.

Shawn Jordan, towing operations manager at Yaz, said his team has four trucks available, but staffing constraints can sometimes mean only two or three are dispatched at a time. Tow truck operators are paired with members of the Portland Police Department, who ticket vehicles and determine which cars to tow, he said.

“As far as the prioritizing, we tow what the officers tell us to tow,” Jordan said. “We can’t tow a car unless the police officer puts a ticket on the window.”

Jordan said his operators usually try to stay out for the duration of the ban, but some other companies wrap up operations after midnight.

Jordan also said that the police have been inconsistent in determining whether or not to tow a car if plows have already run a given street. A spokesperson for the department reached after hours Monday night could not provide details into how officers determine which vehicles to tow.

“It should be (that) every vehicle on the street gets towed,” Jordan said.

Waning compliance

City officials say enforcement can only go so far, and they urged residents to be mindful of parking announcements.

“We always strive and hope for voluntary compliance,” said Mike Murray, the city’s public works director. He said public perceptions that cars aren’t being towed as frequently as they should be are “absolutely correct.”

He said the peninsula tends to see the most unmoved cars, and that the Oakdale and Deering neighborhoods also struggle to comply.

But if a plow operator approaches a street and sees that cars are still parked there, they simply plow around those vehicles and are not obligated to call for a tow truck, Murray said. While that can leave streets only partially cleared, it allows for a more timely plowing of the entire city than if operators had to wait for roads to be fully cleared.

But even just one untowed car can trigger a ripple effect of noncompliance.

A perceived lack of towing can leave some residents more comfortable violating a ban, creating a cycle of bad behavior, Grondin said.

“It’s led to some people to try to take their chances,” Grondin said. “When they comply and others don’t, it really jeopardizes the amount of service that we’re able to provide.”

She said adherence to the bans has slipped over the last few years and urged drivers to consider the impact that leaving their cars in the road may have on others.

“These are your neighbors. This is a community,” Grondin said. “Nobody wants to be complying and then find out someone else didn’t comply, and now they’re traipsing through snow or can’t park again.”