City’s New Parking Rules in Effect
Tuesday, September 13, 2016 @ 12:51 PM
Prince George, B.C. – The City of Prince George’s new parking rules go into effect today.
This after city council finalised amendments to their Parking and Traffic Bylaw at last night’s council meeting.
The new rules are as follows:
- Most fines are $50
- Fines related to being too close to a cross walk or fire hydrant are now $75.
- Fines related to parking in a disabled stall are now $100.
- After the third infraction of overtime parking, the fine will be $75 for each infraction after that. The fine will remain $75 thereafter, and does not reset.
- As before, there is no reduction for early payment of fines.
- The new three-hour time limit downtown will not change until the signage is changed and the city installs its license plate recognition software. This is expected to occur sometime in October. The city will communicate to the public when the software is about to be installed.
- Tickets issued prior to today are still at the old rates.
Comments
It will be interesting to see if the City will be able to drive all the workers downtown into off street parking. This is the real reason for the additional fines, and the new software If in fact they are successful then we will have very few people parking on our streets, because most of those who park downtown (especially in the morning) are people who work downtown.
So if the program is a success, then we will be able to gauge just how many people actually shop downtown on a regular basis.
The fact that once you enter the zone, you remain on the clock, even if you leave the zone and return will be a contentious issue. In fact it is a perfect example of how City administration thinks it can push people around and do whatever they like.
In my opinion keeping you on a clock for a eight hour period even when you are not in the zone is dead wrong. In fact it borders on harassment by the City. If I get tickets from coming and going to and from this zone when in fact I have not used anywhere near the three hours allotted in the zone there will be hell to pay.
I for one will be more than happy to hire a lawyer and take the City to task for an infringement on my rights of freedom of movement, and harassment.
Just because you work for the City does not give you the right to push people around.
I don’t think you will need a lawyer. The City intends to back down immediately if it’s a customer they are dealing with. Just give them a call.
As you stated, the purpose is to get the employees off the street. They can tell pretty quickly by punching in your license plate whether you are downtown every day Monday to Friday or if you are there only a couple times a week.
Wow, I bet the city is just shaking in its boots. You might go and get a lawyer and sue them because they gave you a parking ticket? Actually, cities are endowed with this power via the local government act, so you’d be wasting your time. Besides, who cares? What’s the big deal? If you want to park down there for more than 3 hours, then pay the four bucks. Simple. If you’re too cheap for that then just drive either West of Winnipeg or East of Scotia, park for free and walk to where ever you’re going. No big deal.
Just another example of our city council running rampant on their own agenda.
I can honestly say that between this issue, the renaming of parks, their whole lack of agenda for park development, bike lanes, the way they’ve handled issues in new and old subdivisions, snow removal problems and service you get for cost of taxes that I will probably not be voting for a single member that’s currently on this council.
This is by far the most unorganized but most freewheeling council I’ve seen in this city in 53 years.
I know many people are happy, but I certainly know many that aren’t happy with them either.
So frustrating.
I understand that you are trying to keep off the road people that parked all day and who are workers. But, I for myself will go shop somewhere else instead of going in town as I never know how long I take to look around. I usually take one day a week to do all my shopping. With this new law, you are keeping me away from town. I will keep my hours only for doctor, dentist or special appointment. I hated going into the big box store and tried to encourage the downtown. But 3 hours to shop is not long enough. Sorry for the downtown business as you all are loosing me. I will not change my habits of shopping all day and waist gas. I live 30 minutes out of town and my time is precious. So, hello big box store for now on. GOOD BYE DOWNTOWN. Sad to say but a lot of business will suffer…specially restaurants, and all the stores.
It’s been 2 hours of free parking until now, so what is the issue with it moving to 3 hours?
sorry I have not been following this topic closely so bear with me, what happens if you have a court case and could be in the court house for an undeterminable amount of time? or if you are in a restaurant for more than 3 hours? ( I have been known to meet a person for lunch and spend more than a few hours playing catch up and drinking coffee, losing track of time)good thing I don’t go downtown alot.
Maybe they can hire another consultant to explain the rules to the taxpayers of PG? Timezones? lol. Leave it to the city to take something so simple, and ruin it.
Oh dear my poor spoiled fellow PG residents. So go downtown and park FREE of charge up to 3 hours. Or, if you’re going to court or planning on an all day lunch, simply go a block or two (!) and pay the ridiculously cheap fees the city charges for pay parking. Jeesh!
Lenny, you said it all. Should sell cheese on this site.
As usual a lot of people do not understand the problem. Take Lenny and Joe Blow for example, They believe that there will be sufficient parking available in the Citys pay parking lots. They forget that if all the people who are now parking on the street. (People who work downtown) migrate to off street parking there will not be any space available in these lots for legitimate shoppers.
The system would be fine if it could track when you came into the Zone and when you left, however it cant. Get it. The system cannot tell when you arrived or left the zone. So lets say you came to town at 9am, went to the doctor and left the zone at 10;30am, that’s not a problem, however if you come back into the zone at 130 and go for lunch or shopping the system will show that you exceeded the 3 hours in the zone, and you will get a ticket. Even though you have actually only parked in the Zone for 1 1/2 hours more or less.
In fact you could park in the zone for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon and the system would show you being in the zone for over 3 hours and you would be ticketed. That’s my understanding.
So I would not be suing the City for a parking ticket, I would go after them for harassment, and for writing a $50.00 ticket for 15 or 20 minutes of parking when I am allowed three hours free.
I know this is a little confusing, however you get my drift???
I think, may be wrong, but if you talk to the Bylaw manager, he’ll set you straight.
Actually, the City can tell when you were scanned. They can tell if you left the zone and came back. The problem is that the automatic software costs too much to modify–so they aren’t modifying it (at least not right now).
If you call and complain about a ticket, a human can see that you left and will void the ticket. They have to do this because the proposed bylaws don’t allow them to give you a ticket for two 15 minute visits–one in the morning and one in the evening.
The question is how often will they be scanning? If it’s once every hour, then you might have to leave for an hour. If it’s once every two hours, then you might have to leave for two hours.
To address this, the City has said that they will back down if it appears to be a customer. But for those office workers that want to game the system every Monday and Friday and hurt the retailers by tying up all the free parking–too bad. You’ve been abusing the system too long and you’ve been hurting the downtown businesses. You deserve to pay a ticket.
No, the City cannot tell when you left the zone. They also cannot tell when you entered the zone.
They cycle through the downtown on about a 1.5 hour sequence.
THAT is the problem!
To tell when one came into the zone and left the zone one would have to have CCTV cameras at all streets entering the zone like they have in places like London England.
Ho often do you want to go to the City to explain what you were doing?
They also said that when they allow your excuse, they will ask you to sing that you will never do that again.
LOL ….the naiveté of the City is simply amazing.
i’ll be totally honest, I’m one of the people that often parks downtown while I work. some days I check my tires, some days I pay in the lots. I accept the decision to start monitoring vehicles. I’m not going to move into a lot for 1000.00 a year. I’ll start commuting by bike and carpooling in the winter. It’s not so bad, I’ll probably lose 20lbs by the spring! hopefully other employees downtown use this as an opportunity as well, instead of just bellyaching!
So City hall, Mr Hall is a great example ( boo hoo Hall) cry people aren’t coming downtown, so they create functions to draw us there then ticket you for doing so.
So if you want to see this falls on its face fast, don’t go downtown.
After all they obviously don’t want you downtown, at least not for more than 3 hours in a full day.
Once the Businesses realize this inane parking bylaw is losing them business they will take care of city hall and this bylaw for us.
Comments for this article are closed.