City officials call for heftier parking fines

With compliance falling, steeper penalties seen as way to reverse trend

Scofflaws beware. Edmonton officials are hoping to increase — in some cases double — the fines for parking on a snow route, staying too long in a restricted zone and parking near a fire hydrant.

“We’re trying to make this not worth the risk,” Ryan Pleckaitis, the city’s director of complaints and investigations, said Thursday.

It’s hard to enforce parking offences with a tow truck, especially on congested rush hour streets or immediately after a snow storm, and people aren’t getting the message from existing fines, he said.

“It’s important we get the vehicles off those seasonal ban routes so we can get out the graders and get those roads cleared.”

The recommendation came in a report to council’s community services committee Thursday. It gets debated Monday.

City officials said the fines are meant to be deterrents to promote “a safe and orderly city.” But compliance is falling. In no-parking zones, for example, officials issued 18,771 tickets in 2016, up 21 per cent from 15,493 tickets in 2012.

Tickets in no-stopping zones are also increasing, and end up causing congestion during rush hour as the vehicles block lanes.

“One car parked along a curb coming out of downtown can congest a major route significantly,” said downtown Coun. Scott McKeen, suggesting the increase in fines could be a good option.

He cautioned against increasing the fine for when your parking meter runs out, since people might still be getting used to the new ePark technology.

The recommendations come at the same time the city invests in a new robo-parking patrol that can check whether a person has paid for parking while it drives by.

The increased fines garner the city an extra $600,000.