Saskatoon city councillors took the first step Monday toward easing the time limit for people who park their cars on residential streets.

Councillor Cynthia Block called on the city to change the parking time limit to 72 hours from 36 hours.

She said the current system doesn't work.

"I am interested in seeing how it would work out to at least attempt to have the ability for folks that don't have off-street parking to go away or a weekend and not be in violation of the bylaw," she said.

Block garnered support from three other councillors on council's transportation committee. Mayor Charlie Clark was among them.

"The thing that I always have a hard time defending around this 36-hour rule is that if somebody says to me, "Look, you've been saying you want to give people the option to take the bus, or a carpool, or walk to work, and I do that, and I have my car left on the road for a day and a half and I get a ticket," said Clark.

"So there's this kind of disconnect between the message of 'Use other choices' but 'You gotta keep moving your car around.' "

Next steps

The bylaw change still needs to be OK'd at city council's next regular meeting.

The time limit is in place to allow city workers to sweep or plow streets without obstacles.

The city handed out more than 5,000 tickets to people whose cars blocked the way in 2017.

Another almost 1,000 tickets were issued after people complained about cars being parked in a neighbourhood for longer than 36 hours.