They're all northern plains cities that get socked several times a year with big snowfalls. But Rapid City, Sioux Falls, Bismarck, N.D., and Casper, Wyo. take different approaches to snow removal that vary with each city's resources, geography and even the personality of the residents.

Bismarck

The capital of North Dakota takes the most comprehensive snow removal strategy of the four cities.

"We provide whatever service the citizens want to pay for," said Jeff Heintz, public works service operations director.

In 2000 the citizens decided they not only wanted all residential streets plowed, but they would pay extra taxes for the city to install "snow gates" on its plow blades. Plow drivers can lift the gates up and down to keep the snow they plow from blocking homeowners' driveways.

This slows the plowing operation, so it takes an extra $438,000 a year to cover the extra manpower and equipment.

If the city is expecting just a dusting, a coating of sand will usually take care of things.

But in a real snowstorm, the city has crews out during the duration.

Prior to a storm this week, the city salted overpasses and bridges. As soon as the snow started, trucks went out immediately to sand the streets.

Like the other cities Bismarck makes emergency routes and arterials a priority, and makes sure emergency routes stay open during the entire storm.

During this week's storm crews alternated 12-hour shifts from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and then from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. to plow all 300 miles of streets. The city has seven plowing "units," each with four workers and a motor grader, front-end loader and sander.

"The key to the whole thing is providing public safety," Heintz said.

Sioux Falls

The largest city of the group, Sioux Falls has more than 3,000 miles of streets to plow and makes it a goal to clear them all, including residential streets, in a storm big enough to be called a "snow alert," anything more than about four inches, public works director Kevin Smith said.

They don't use snow gates, however, to keep snow out of driveways.

"Our goal is to be done as fast as possible," Smith said. "Anything that slows the crews down is going to slow down the public."

It costs $450,000 to $500,000 to plow the entire city as it is, and Smith said they're sensitive to the cost.

"For us it's already not an inexpensive venture to plow," he said. "To keep the level of service up there anything you do that adds time, well, that adds money."

The city is divided into 18 maintenance districts and when a storm is on its way they send crews into each.

Signed emergency snow routes are the priority and then come secondary snow routes and residential streets.

Street department employees are only about a quarter of the crew. Another quarter are other city workers, and the remaining half are contractors who use motor graders, which do a better job than plows at scooping up packed-down snow.

Unlike Rapid City, Sioux Falls can use both sand and salt. They use salt in times of the year when the snow is likely to melt quickly. In colder times, when the melted snow would just refreeze, they use sand, which makes the streets grittier.

Smith said Sioux Falls has an edge because its snows aren't as deep and heavy as those in the Black Hills.

They are more aggressive about clearing emergency routes, issuing as many as 700 to 1,000 parking tickets during a storm and towing cars that block the way. The city lets people sign up for e-mail and Twitter messaging that alerts them to when a big snow is coming and they need to get their cars off the streets.

Smith feels pressure from the business sector to remove the snow quickly from the downtown and then to haul it away in dump trucks, something Rapid City hasn't done in this week's storm.

"We really are a 24-hour city," he said. "We can't afford to shut down."

Smith says a city's snow service comes down to, "What are you willing to invest? I think by and large our citizens are pretty happy with the work we do throughout the course of a winter."

Casper

Wyoming's laissez-faire attitude comes through when streets superintendent Mel Farley talks about snowstorms.

"You can't fight Mother Nature," he says. "She'll beat you every time."

Casper is like Rapid City in that they don't try to plow every street in every storm.

"If we plow all our snow routes, by the time we get that done most of the residential streets are melted," Farley said. In cold months like January, they will clear ice from residential streets.

The decision to plow residential streets is made by the city manager, who balances the cost against safety and the number of complaints he is receiving.

The city doesn't use sand, since they just have to clean it up after the storm, Farley said.

"It's just a waste of sand." They use a grainy salt product called "ice slicer" instead.

Crews work 24 hours during a storm to clear the roads.

"Some places go home at night and we don't," Farley said. "We've thought about it. But we get so far behind if we do."

Downtown and arterial streets are plowed with snow piled in windrows in the middle of the street, making it easier to collect in dump trucks and keeping it from blocking driveways and intersections.

The wind is a big factor in Casper's snow plan, forcing plows to revisit main roads several times over.

Farley said the city tries to balance the needs of the community against the cost to taxpayers.

"You can't make everybody happy," Farley says. "You have to do what makes the most people happy."