16-210. Streets and sidewalks; use; safety regulations.
A city of the first class may prevent and remove all encroachments into and upon all sidewalks, streets, avenues, alleys, and other city property, and prevent and punish all horseracing, fast driving or riding in the streets, highways, alleys, bridges or places in the city, and all games, practices or amusements therein likely to result in damage to any person or property. It may regulate, prevent, and punish the operation of vehicles or the riding, driving or passing of animals over or upon any streets or sidewalks of the city; regulate and prevent the use of streets, sidewalks, and public grounds for signs, sign posts, awnings, telegraph, telephone or other poles, racks, bulletin boards, and the posting of handbills and advertisements; regulate traffic and sale upon the streets, sidewalks and public places; punish and prohibit cruelty to animals; and regulate and prevent the moving of buildings through or upon the streets.
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Annotations
Where the Legislature has provided a limitation upon the speed of vehicles, the city, by ordinance, may make further restrictions, if the same are reasonable and made necessary by the circumstances, and such ordinances do not prohibit or restrict the free use of the streets. Christensen v. Tate, 87 Neb. 848, 128 N.W. 622 (1910).
Prior to the enactment of this section in 1901, the fee of the streets was in the city in trust for public use, and such city could not sell or permanently obstruct them, without compensation being paid owners of property specially injured thereby. Omaha & R. V. R. R. Co. v. Rogers, 16 Neb. 117, 19 N.W. 603 (1884); Burlington & M. R. R. Co. v. Reinhackle, 15 Neb. 279, 18 N.W. 69 (1883), 48 Am. R. 342 (1883).
A purchaser of a tract by metes and bounds is not entitled to an injunction to restrain claimant from enclosing an alley, where the addition from which purchaser obtained his tract, was not platted, dedicated nor conveyed to public. Bushman v. Gibson, 15 Neb. 676, 20 N.W. 106 (1884).
Court will not by mandamus compel city to remove building temporarily placed in the street, which placement was reasonable and necessary for the erection of a building upon an adjoining lot, provided, the obstruction was not unreasonably prolonged. State ex rel. Beatty v. City of Omaha, 14 Neb. 265, 15 N.W. 210 (1883), 45 Am. R. 108 (1883).
City is primarily liable for injury, though it has recourse from owner, where owner let a contract for excavation of a sidewalk space, and where by reason of the acts of negligence of the contractor in making such excavation, the plaintiff was injured. Palmer v. City of Lincoln, 5 Neb. 136, 25 Am. R. 470 (1876).