City is raising parking fines in bid to curb ‘bad behaviour’
Parking scofflaws, be warned: Montreal is about to raise fines for drivers who leave their cars in the wrong place — the first such hike since 2009.
General parking tickets — handed out to those in no-parking zones or at expired meters — will rise from $53 to $62, a 17 per cent increase, the city announced Thursday.
The fine for double-parking will jump from $53 to $87, an increase of 64 per cent.
And fines for people who illegally park in zones reserved for those with disabilities will more than double — going from $149 to $300.
The higher penalties are expected to generate an extra $9 million per year in revenue for the city, Éric Alan Caldwell, the executive committee member responsible for transport, said in an interview.
Montreal’s fines were low compared to other North American cities and were due for an update, he said.
Caldwell described the increase in the general parking ticket as an “adjustment” that is required because it has not been hiked in almost 10 years.
As for disabled-parking-zone and double-parking fines, the city wants to discourage bad behaviour, he said.
“People with disabilities face significant mobility challenges on a daily basis, so respect for parking areas reserved for them is all the more important,” Caldwell said.
And double-parkers obstruct traffic and cause congestion, he added. “We want to send a clear message that this behaviour is detrimental to fluidity and must be eliminated.”
The city said the increases — to be adopted at the April 23 city council meeting — should come into effect in late April.
In the city budget adopted in January, Montreal estimated it will collect $186 million in traffic and parking fines in 2018. That’s $11.7 million more than the city expected last year.
Mayor Valérie Plante’s administration first disclosed it planned to raise fines in January.
“People who don’t want to get tickets, all they have to do is not break the rules,” executive committee chair Benoit Dorais said at the time.
He made the comments as he confirmed Montreal was eliminating the quotas and the “ticket traps” that were used to fill them. Under the system, which had been in place for years, police were told they had to write a certain number of tickets, with their bosses receiving bonuses tied to the quotas being met.
“There will be no pressure on police officers,” Dorais said. “We’ll rely on the good judgment of the officers.”