The City of Ottawa is seeking public input on ways to improve its overnight winter parking bans with open houses planned for April and May.
Thomas McVeigh, president of the Centretown Citizens Community Association, says the overnight parking ban is an operational issue for the city. “I think it could be done better, but everything can be,” he says.
Currently, a parking ban is imposed when it snows more than seven centimetres at night. If it snows during the day, plows have to go around parked cars.
Linda Hancock, president of the Old Ottawa South Community Association, says she thinks figuring out alternative places to park is a challenge for those who don’t have one readily available.
“From what I see around my own little area of Old Ottawa South, people seem to find options that work during those times,” she says.
“Those with shared driveways tend to fit all cars in when they need to. I’m not sure what others do when they don’t have this option, but somehow, the cars seem to be off the streets.”
McVeigh runs the Share Freehouse restaurant on Somerset Street West, so parking issues affect his customers too.
“It’s always going to be an issue, because in order to clear the streets, you can’t park,” he says. “It just doesn’t work. Florence Street is an example. You can ban parking on it, but I can’t see them clearing that street for two or three days.”
McVeigh says snow removal would be better if the ban was enforced on the nights the streets were actually going to be cleared.
“I think there’s operational ways of doing (snow removal) more effectively so the parking ban takes place for shorter periods of time,” he says. “I’m stressed because we’re short on parking.”
The city is expected to exceed its snow removal budget by $10 million in 2015. The city’s winter operations were budgeted at $62 million.To handle the projected deficit, the city’s manager of road services, Luc Gagné, wrote in an email that surpluses in other tax-supported programs are used to offset the lack of money in operational budgets.
If that’s not enough, Gagné says the city has established a winter reserve fund to cover deficits from above average snowfall.
“The cost of winter operations is extremely dependent on the weather,” he said. “ Snowfall accumulation, the number of days with precipitation and temperature fluctuations all influence the overall winter operation expenditures.”
One of the ways to avoid the parking ban is to get an exemption permit, the majority of which are distributed in the Centretown area. Gagné said the permits are only given to residents whose properties do not have off-street parking, such as a garage or driveway. As of March 30, there were 865 active on-street residential parking permits, he says.
Gagné also said the city will be conducting a review of the parking ban, which may lead to changes in areas the review identifies.
McVeigh says the community association will be heavily involved in the public-input process that goes along with the review.
“The better we do at getting our streets cleaned, the better,” he says. “We defer a lot to the city in terms of their expertise and how to do this, but the better we do, the better it is for everyone.”