[Image-1]
To the meter maids in the North End, quit it!!
I live in one of the many beautiful North End Halifax heritage row houses that do not have a driveway. As a car owner, I am forced to deal with the woes of on-street Halifax parking, exceptionally infuriating during the winter with the parking ban. Most other Canadian cities have figured out a way to accommodate this situation, by allowing for parking on one side of the street on certain nights, and then switching to the other side of the street the following night, in order to allow for snow removal on both sides of the street. Not in Halifax, no parking whatsoever.
So I secure off-street parking during the parking ban from 1 am to 6 am, and wake up at 6 am on a storm day (work cancelled) to move my car back to the street, so the parking lot can be plowed. Then at 1.20 pm in the afternoon, I receive a $50 parking ticket because my car was “surrounded by snow”. Are you kidding me??!! The parking ban says nothing about parking on the street at 1 in the afternoon.
This is following a small war regarding the distance a car can be parked from an intersection, where the meter maid was measuring from the end of the straight edge of a rounded corner, and not the corner itself, and giving tickets. Thankfully the city official whom I spoke with had multiple complaints about that individual and their measuring and revoked the ticket, but come on!!
I suspect that parking enforcement are getting a commission on tickets, which is why they are illegally ticketing cars. This needs to stop!! Do we really need an army of meter maids patrolling the city who write illegal tickets in order to support their existence?? Trim the herd!!
—Look out for snowballs there bud!!
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2016.
You live in a house with no driveway. What did you honestly expect?
Catch up on your reading. The parking ban is in effect between 1am and 6am (check the radio for the nights it is in effect) and *gasp* during storms.
You can:
1. Call 311 and check to be sure it’s okay
2. Sign up for email/text storm parking notifications
3. Sell your car and walk, bus, cycle
4. Suck it up
5. Complain to the City instead
6. Buy a new house with parking
7. Pay for day-long parking
1. I’m pretty sure meter maids is a term coined when merchants had someone hired to go around and feed the meters so the customers who lost track of time (shopping in their stores) did not get a ticket.
2. ” The parking ban says nothing about parking on the street at 1 in the afternoon. ” Nope, it does not. The motor vehicle act does say if you are impeding snow removal within 12 hours of the end of a storm, you may be ticketed.
3. Distance from intersection: You measure from the cross street, not wherever the rounded curb becomes straight (on the street you’re parked on). City has it right.
Get a grip.
Unfortunately we do need parking enforcement.
You rent or own a place in a city where you say you do not have a driveway or I assume a laneway to a backyard for parking. Therefore, the easiest thing is not to have a car. If you want a car move to a place that has parking. Many other cities that may not have driveways from the street do tend to have laneways in back but they are rare in Halifax.
Thats the price you pay for owning a car during winter. Suck it up buttercup.
If paying for monthly parking at a local lot/ business/ apt/ unused neighbor driveway is cheaper than your tickets – do that. If comparable and less hassle – same suggestion. Otherwise you are still in the green even with tickets.
You should probably accept that the place you live is the price that it is because it doesn’t have a driveway/ garage. If you weren’t dealing with tickets/ parking cost you would be paying out instead via the increased mortgage or rent payments that come with the higher property value of a lot with these additional amenities. No matter how you slice it, you are paying for that parking somehow.