Despite fines, people still keep parking on snow routes in Kelowna
Kelowna bans cars from parking on certain roads when it snows but getting residents to comply is tough.
“Compliance with parking bans on some routes is not great,” Andrew Schwerdtfeger, the city’s roadways operations manager, told iNFOnews.ca today, Dec. 20.
“Some residents just don't care and will always park on the road. The residents that do care and do get their vehicles out of the way suffer because of that because the roads are narrow. We can’t push the snow back fully.”
More than 200 warnings and tickets have been handed out this year and half-a-dozen or so vehicles have been towed when plows can’t get through.
“Some vehicles are parked on the road in hillside areas that haven’t moved once all winter,” Schwerdtfeger said. “They have warnings under their windshield wipers under the snow and they’re just not moving.”
The tickets carry fines of $45 per day.
“It’s not a big hammer but when you get that night over night over night, that starts to sting quite a bit,” Schwerdtfeger said. A week’s worth of tickets would total $315.
READ MORE: Kelowna snow plow drivers seeing increase in 'snow rage'
Getting the roads clear is vital in order to get emergency crews through when necessary.
There are seven areas in Kelowna that are designated as snow routes where on-street parking can be banned at certain times of the year. Those are Academy Way, Black Mountain, Clifton/Magic Estates/Wilden, Dilworth Mountain, Kirschner Mountain, McKinley Beach and areas in the South Mission, including The Ponds.
In order to ticket all offenders, virtually every city bylaw officer would have to be out patrolling on every snow day, which is not practical.
"It's really defeating when you drive through, when there’s a parking ban on, and you see 50 cars on the road and every driveway is empty," Schwerdtfeger said.
Some cities in Ontario, where Schwerdtfeger comes from, ban all on-street parking between October and March.
He’s not calling for that in Kelowna but will definitely be lobbying to step up enforcement.
In the meantime, with the latest snowfall, crews with 31 pieces of equipment will be out through New Years Eve and New Years Day clearing up the snow.
The hope is the snow will hold off long enough so for crews to clear the accumulated piles of snow in places like the city’s 800 cul-de-sacs where it’s now difficult to get snow plows and garbage trucks through.
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