Winter Snow Parking Restrictions
Winter Overnight Parking Ban
The City's Winter Overnight Parking Ban helps ensure public safety each winter by allowing emergency vehicles and public transportation to move freely, and reducing hazardous conditions for motorists, pedestrians and other travelers. The ban is enforced on 107 miles of vital arterial streets from 3 am to 7 am starting December 1st through April 1st, regardless of snow.
Signage is permanently posted along the affected routes. DSS also posts flyers on cars parked on the streets affected by the parking ban as an additional reminder before restrictions begin.
Cars left parked on these designated roadways obstruct the path of snowplows and prevent routes from being fully plowed and salted when it snows. Violators of the parking ban will be towed and face a minimum $150 towing fee, a $60 ticket, and a storage fee of $25 per day. Vehicles in violation of the ban will be towed to Pounds 2 (10301 S. Doty Ave.) or 6 (701 N. Sacramento).
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Winter Overnight Parking Ban Release
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Winter Overnight Parking Ban Map
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Winter Overnight Parking Ban Flyer
Two-Inch Parking Ban
A separate snow related parking ban exists for another 500 miles of main streets and can be activated after there are at least two inches of snow on the street, no matter the time of day or the calendar date. While the 2” inch snow ban is not activated often, motorists who are parked there when it snows could receive a ticket or find that their vehicle has been relocated in order to facilitate snow clearing operations.
Both of these parking bans were implemented on designated arterial streets to prevent recurrences of problems that happened in 1967 and 1979 when Chicago came to a traffic standstill due to major snowstorms.