Think you can leave the car at the entrance to the airport for a few minutes while you pick up your friend? You might find yourself regretting it once you come back out – just ask the 1,583 people who ended up with a parking ticket at Ottawa MacDonald-Cartier International Airport last year. It looks like there will be even more this year, too. In the first six months of 2016, over four hundred more parking tickets were issued outside the airport than in the first half of 2015.

What’s the issue with people parking outside the airport entrance for a few minutes? “The parkway is constructed as a perfect loop, so if people start to park on the inside lane then we have people double and triple parking,” a representative of Ottawa Airport’s parking office said. “That clogs up the lanes, therefore we have people that are honking, we have people walking through traffic. That becomes dangerous.”

Charlotta Lundahl, a Swedish student who used the airport, said, “It actually looked pretty dangerous. I could see people walking around cars, and there were some with kids. I’m glad I was just using a taxi.”

Explore the graphs below to find out more. You can hover your mouse over them to get more information.

Ottawa MacDonald-Cartier International Airport. Copyright The Ottawa Citizen.