As we all know, winter never sleeps in Calgary, with mother nature dealing out large amounts of snow over the last three weeks. Along with the usual inconveniences winter snow brings, a parking ban instilled by the City of Calgary faced a large amount of violations. Within a 24-hour parking ban, the police had to hand out 1,290 tickets. In some instances, cars had to be towed. Now this is the second time this year Calgary has ordered parked cars to vacate priority plowing routes so that those path can be cleared of snow. In the previous occurrence of the parking ban, the police handed out 4,100 warnings, but no fines.
There were 19 crashes on those very roads over the last few days, and fire crews were even called to Stoney Trail after a car collided with a power pole.
This same ban in Edmonton saw 1,863 fines and a total of 147 cars being towed. Many city officials find these statistics worrying, because if people don’t clear out of the roads for the simple reason of being lazy, then we have a very apathetic group of Calgarians in our wonderful city.
Now the problem may not directly be people who pay no heed to parking bans, but perhaps the parking ban from the City wasn’t conveyed properly to those who used those parking areas and the citizens aren’t the ones to be blamed.
But either reason is unacceptable, whether it be apathetic citizens, or major miscommunications from the City, if we can’t clear our roads properly the consequences are troubling.
