More than 19,000 tickets issued in first two weeks of City of Calgary street sweeping

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Ryan White Reporter / Producer

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The Calgary Parking Authority (CPA) has already surpassed the number of tickets it issued in 2018 to violators of parking bans during street sweeping and there is still an estimated six weeks left in the 2019 cleaning effort.

“At the end of the day, our goal is to hand out zero tickets,” explained Chris McGechay, City of Calgary roads spokesperson. “We’d like to just see people being compliant. We’re not asking them to remove their vehicles overnight, we’re asking them to do it during the daytime while we’re sweeping. We’re sweeping seven days a week so we can get this over and done with as quickly as possible.”

“We’re hoping that if you have gotten a ticket this year it does send the message that you need to be aware of sweeping in future years.”

For the second year in a row, the CPA has included photo enforcement to nab parking ban violators.

“We are ticketing some tickets on the windshields but the majority are being done through the mail by photo enforcement,” said Joan Hay, CPA manager of enforcement. “We would ask Calgarians to please check the signage in their neighbourhood and remove their vehicles from the street during the time of the enforcement period.”

In the first two weeks of the street sweeping campaign, the CPA has issued 19,345 tickets and towed approximately 260 vehicles. The majority of the tows were short-tows, where the vehicle was moved a small distance within the community. During 2018's street sweeping, a total of approximately 12,000 tickets were issued.

Roger Dunkley was among the Calgarians to receive a ticket this year and he’s less than pleased with what he considers to be a lack of notification regarding the street sweeping schedule.

“For the last 26 years that I’ve lived here, the City has always come along and put out no parking signs along our street the day before they came and swept the street. This year they didn’t do that,” said Dunkley. “They didn’t put up any signs anywhere within the neighbourhood and put them way out on the perimeter of the neighbourhood.”

According to Dunkley, the nearest street sweeping sign to his home was roughly a quarter mile (400 metres) away. “One morning I walk out and, lo-and-behold, the City had swept past my car and a number of other cars and then, a couple weeks later, in the mail we get these lovely tickets for $80.”

Dunkley says the ticket was accompanied by a letter from the City explaining how to sign up for future street sweeping notifications. “I think the City should just admit that they screwed up on their communications program this year and quash all these tickets and start afresh for next year.”

The City of Calgary roads department says it sympathetic to people who receive tickets but there are numerous avenues to find out when your street is being swept including community signs that are verified prior to ticketing, an online address lookup for scheduling, text alerts and email alerts.

“We’re hoping that the story next year is fewer tickets,” said McGechay. “We obviously laid down a lot of material in February, those were very cold months, and a lot of material that was laid down was primarily that gravel. We do expect street sweeping to go into June. Compliance helps us get the job done quicker.”

“When our sweepers have to weave in and out of traffic it does slow them down.”

For more information on the City of Calgary’s street sweeping program including parking ban schedules visit Spring Clean-up street cleaning.

RELATED IMAGES City of Calgary street sweeping parking ban sign