The City of Ottawa, in 2015, received more than a thousand call complaints from people contesting parking fines, according to data collected from the City.
Ciaran Browne got fined on Mar. 18, in a parking lot between Metcalfe and Somerset West Street.
(Play the soundcloud file to hear Browne’s story)
Of the 1,077 calls the city received in 2015, 32 per cent were made from the Somerset ward, according to an analysis of the City’s 311 calls. The highest number of complaints have been made from Somerset since 2013.
“Somerset being in the heart of downtown Ottawa is one of the busiest areas that we have,” said Troy Leeson, the deputy chief of by-law services in the parking division. “So naturally if you’re writing more tickets in that area than others, there’ll be higher reports.”
The chart below shows the number of call complaints, by ward, from 2013 to 2015 to contest parking fines.
Source: The City of Ottawa’s 311 dataset
Between 2014 and 2015, there was a 13 per cent increase in the total number of calls made to contest parking penalties. The difference in the prior years, 2013 and 2014, are almost negligible.
Source: The City of Ottawa’s 311 dataset
Leeson says there are no clear reasons for the increase in 2015 complaints. Parking penalties “can be a very broad category and very difficult to speak to without having specific scenarios that we’re looking at,” he said.
Violation of a parking regulation can attract fines that range from $40 to $450. These fines can accumulate when people do not pay up on time.
(To read the entire traffic and parking by-law for the City of Ottawa, click on the annotated image)