Millions of dollars in unpaid parking tickets are piled up in municipalities across B.C. — and officials are helpless to collect the cash.

In Vancouver, more than $5 million in outstanding fines are owed on parking tickets issued in 2013 alone.

“The problem is there’s been no effective way for local governments to collect the fines,” said Rhona Martin, president of the Union of B.C. Municipalities.

“Our members would like something done about this.”

And now that the province has helped TransLink deal with fare evasion tickets by withholding licenses and insurance from those who don’t pay their transit fines, a precedent has been set for municipal officials to get similar backing for parking scofflaws.

So far this year in Burnaby, about $775,000 in traffic bylaw fines have been issued but $266,000 or 34 per cent has yet to be paid. About half a million is still outstanding from 2013.

Burnaby councillor Sav Dhaliwal is of the opinion that cities need some help from the province to collect on the tickets.

“We have very little enforcement [power] to collect tickets,” said Dhaliwal, who is the chairman of Burnaby’s traffic safety committee.

Referring tickets to a collection agency is costly. “There’s not that much return on that,” Dhaliwal said.

Vancouver city Coun. Raymond Louie said the city has approached the province on “numerous occasions” to get similar legislation to the Translink collection deal.

“Certainly it would be an improvement,” said Louie, who is chairman of the city’s finance committee.

“I think the ease of collection would be welcomed.”

Parking enforcement is a major effort in Vancouver. A crew of about 100 enforcement officers cover the city seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.

Last year they issued $26 million worth of tickets. About 86 per cent were either paid or collected; the outstanding $5.4 million is from some 44,179 tickets that are still not paid. A collection agency takes over after 60 days, but thousands of tickets remain owing.

The total number of parking tickets issued in Richmond in 2013 was 38,068, with just 6,648 ­— 17.4 per cent — remaining unpaid. That leaves the municipality with about $220,000 a year in unpaid tickets.

In Surrey, where the average parking penalty is $35 compared to Vancouver’s $82.30, there is about $460,000 in fines unpaid from last year.

Jas Rehal, manager of bylaw enforcement, also likes the idea of getting some enforcement help from ICBC.

“That’s something we’d like to look into,” Rehal said.

Outside Metro Vancouver, Kelowna has $255,000 in unpaid parking tickets from 2013 and another $156,000 in 2014 through to the end of April.

Prince George doesn’t have the same concern. B.C.’s largest northern city has a population of 84,232, but a spokesman said there’s no major concerns there about unpaid parking tickets — probably because there is two hours of free parking in the downtown core.

In an email response to The Province, the Ministry of Transportation said it already helps municipalities in the collection of parking fines by providing registered owner information.

The ministry added: “There are currently no plans for ICBC to take on a more active role in municipal fine collection.”

Even with some enforcement ‘teeth’ against fare evasion, TransLink is struggling to collect fines.

Since the new legislation came into effect in September 2012 linking driver’s licences and insurance to unpaid tickets, TransLink said 29 per cent of fare cheaters have paid their fines for about $2.3 million.

The remaining tickets, worth about $7.3 million, are caught in various levels of the process. But the situation is still better than before, when transit police wrote fare-evasion tickets that many people just totally disregarded.

UNPAID FINES

A sampling of the amount in overdue parking tickets in B.C. in 2013:

Vancouver: $5.4 million

Burnaby: $458,000

Surrey: $460,000

Richmond: $220,000

Kelowna: $255,000

fluba@theprovince.com

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