Fines may increase for not moving your car after big snowfall

CALGARY (660 NEWS) — The Transportation and Transit Committee has made a recommendation that the fine for not moving your car during a snow route parking ban should go up.

As it stands, you risk a $75 dollar fine for not moving your car off the street following a large snowfall. If paid early, that fine can be reduced to $40 or $50. Those fees are among the lowest across major municipalities in Canada.

So far in 2018, there have been four parking bans issued, with the Calgary Parking Authority issuing a total of 8,348 tickets during those bans. The lack of compliance may indicate people seem okay with paying the fee, instead of taking the short amount of time to move their vehicle.

In response, the committee recommends increasing it to $120.

“I think $120 is fair,” said Ward 12 Councillor Shane Keating.

He believes it would be a good deterrent, and it puts the fee in line with what you have to pay for not moving a car off the street during spring cleaning.

Ward 8 Councillor Evan Woolley still feels the majority of Calgarians abide by the ban when it is put in place, but an increase would weed out the non-compliant ones.

“For those very, very few that don’t, we need to have enforcement tools, and I think this puts us up with our street sweeping fine amounts and is comparatively still lower than many other Canadian cities.”

Speaking of other cities, Halifax was the only city studied that has a lower fee, where it stands at $50. Edmonton, Vancouver and Winnipeg are at $100, while Toronto tops the list at $200.

If this change ends up being adopted by the rest of council, it would not be going into effect this winter, as Woolley said they want to make sure people are aware of the consequences.

The committee also explored ideas of increased notification — such as through text alerts or push notifications on your phone — to make sure the message is out to the largest number of residents. The report also included a statistic from CPA that they issued over 15,000 courtesy notices to people who would be impacted by these bans, while the snow route parking ban page on Calgary.ca received over 90,000 visits between January and November of this year.

Keating added this is mainly about safety, and making sure the streets are clear after we receive massive dumps of snow.

“It isn’t so much trying to penalize people, but is trying to be as effective as possible, getting the job done as quick as possible, so there’s less inconvenience and making sure that we’re doing as best a job as possible.”

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