Potential parking tickets loom as city set to begin street cleaning Monday
After a year of softer enforcement, Calgarians who fail to observe a street sweeping parking ban are facing stricter policing as spring street cleaning is set to begin next week.
Residential street cleaning will commence Monday with sweeping to occur weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Signage will alert residents to the schedule in their neighbourhood.
Last year as a compassionate pandemic gesture, only 8,801 tickets were issued to parking scofflaws compared to the 36,453 handed out in 2019.
And while 881 vehicles were towed to make way for street sweepers in 2019, just 68 were hauled away last year.
But enforcement is now going back to normal even though the pandemic hasn't ended, said the Calgary Parking Authority.
“If you are working from home, it is still necessary to get your car off the road and onto a driveway, into a garage, a back alley or laneway, or a surface lot,” said Todd Sullivan of the Calgary Parking Authority. “It is important to remember to check with owners of private surface lots before parking your vehicles there.”
The tickets — which carry a maximum $120 fine if not paid within 30 days — won't be placed on vehicles but will arrive in the mail, he said. Towed vehicles won't be impounded but moved a short distance.
Also not being renewed this year is an initiative to assist residents during the pandemic that cancelled spring sweeping parking fines last year if ticketed residents cleaned their own stretch of street.
“As the pandemic had recently forced Calgary into lockdown, the city provided a supportive and compassionate gesture to residents offering to cancel their tickets if they provided photographic proof that they had swept the space the sweepers couldn't reach,” said CPA spokeswoman Adrian Mrdeza.