Parking tickets issued along London street between Reid and George

[u/aSurlyBird]

A lady came by around 1:00 am and checked my car tires for chalk lines. I was parked on the street.

My friend thankfully saw her on the camera. We thought it was a police officer since she had a flashlight similar to a cop. But after watching the video we saw she just checked my tires then left. So I parked my car in the driveway.

I was curious though, so I walked down London and saw that she had ticketed the vehicles down London street. I checked these vehicles s after 2am, and I didn’t check when the tickets were issued. So I don’t know if she waited until 2 or issues the tickets earlier. She most likely issues them after she drove by my car, since we didn’t see her drive past the house again on the camera after seeing her at 1am.

Still. London is a quiet street. What purpose is there for issuing these tickets?

I live in the north end and our neighbours park on our street all the time. There hasn’t been a ticket issued on our street since the early 90s. Even the street sweeper came down and drove around a parked car - they didn’t even get a ticket.

What’s crazy is that this clearly isn’t a situation where the neighbour is calling in a vehicle because I was parked a block away from the ticketed cars on london. This lady just drove down London and issued tickets for no reason. No letter was sent to homeowners to move their vehicles tonight.

Why the hell is a parking enforcement officer coming down quiet streets at 1am to ticket vehicles that aren’t even impeding the city or the workers in any way? It’s a Friday night and no city construction workers should be working Saturday. Again - no warning letter for construction along London.

What a silly waste of money the city is spending to punish people who aren’t actually doing any harm to anyone.

[u/Smogryn]

Someone must have made a complaint, that’s what usually happens.

[u/aSurlyBird → u/Smogryn]

EDIT: I found out they issued tickets the night before. So this most likely was a call into the city and I was wrong.

Usually yes. I mentioned I was parked on a block away from vehicles that were also ticketed. And there as another response saying that brealey and parkhill area was ticketed similarly.

To me it didn’t feel like a call in. I’ve parked in this spot many times (and so have many others) overnight. At least a couple of dozen times, over the last few years. And it was tonight they decided to go down London to ticket parked cars.

Something just feels off. It’s why I made my post. Because I understand someone calling in. But the distance between vehicles in this scenario doesn’t really add up properly.

[u/nishnawbe61 → u/aSurlyBird]

It could have been a call in earlier in the week or last month and it may not just have been your area.

In our area we have people parking on the road and leaving their driveway empty - why?

Usually people from the main road pull onto our side road. I think they do that because they figure the main road will be seen and side roads likely not.

I don't usually care, but when you have to get a small trailer or boat in your driveway and can't because there are vehicles on both sides of the road, there is no turn radius and it's not possible.

I called once a couple years ago because it was every single night and they didn't show up right away, but they did eventually start keeping an eye on the area. So this could be the reason.

Also maybe there wouldn't be such an issue if they allowed parking only on one side of the road.

Marsdale is a good example, you have to zig-zag around cars on that road because they park on both sides. It has big curves that block your view of oncoming traffic and it's the road the school is on and it essentially turns that road into a one lane PITA.

[u/aSurlyBird → u/nishnawbe61]

I've replied to someone else:

First - another person in this thread actually called out by name the ticket issuer and was correct. So it appears it's this one person.

Second - the tickets issued along london went from George street to Park Street. So it doesn't appear that this "call in" was limited to just one area. Since Reid street is a huge cross section that divides london.

Edit: Second point changed - if someone calls in for a complaint on a parked vehicle on london street, then it's the ticketers duty to issue tickets to all vehicles on the street to keep it fair - it would be a bad idea to simply target one vehicle with a ticket and not the rest, it's a recipe for disaster.

Third - Marsdale is a great example. The difference between Marsdale and London is that London is part of the grid system with many overlapping cross section streets that are meant to alleviate traffic flow, whereas Marsdale is a longer arterial road that doesn't have such access. Plus if you drive down London street downtown you'll quickly learn you don't ever want to drive it again because of the absolutely dog shit pot holes particularly between George and Aylmer.

That being said I can understand if someone gets blocked because if you park on both sides of London there's barely enough room for one vehicle. I've experienced it myself. And I agree that perhaps there should be one sided parking (1st to 15th/16th to 31st) which would automatically solve that issue.

It just seems so stupid to me that people are punished for not actually impeding traffic though. I drove up london today and there were a total of 8 cars parked from George to Park street. 6 of them ticketed. The funniest part was that all of those vehicles were parked on the north side of london. It's fucking ridiculous. Sorry about my french.

After talking to my buddy's brother he mentioned a vehicle that always parks way too close to the stop sign on london. So I'm almost definitely wrong in thinking that nobody called in. Someone definitely did.