If you feel you’ve been a constant victim of wrong parking tickets, you’re not alone. About 2,000 people have complained about the same issue; according to the data of complaints received by the city of Ottawa in the last two years.
Aaron King is one of those victims. He was wrongly ticketed three times in space of fewer than two years. But by paying attention to the details on the tickets, he saved $55 by complaining to the city of Ottawa and getting the tickets waived.
In one of the incidents, he parked in front of his parents’ house in Orleans on Sunday afternoon. The sign there says no parking Sundays between 8:30 and 1:30 pm so he made sure that he parked after that time. However, he was surprised to find that he was ticketed just three minutes after parking.
“Generally, it was just very frustrating because I knew they were not valid, and then I had to find time in my busy week to go get them waived because of the negligence of the parking officers,” King said.
Most complaints about wrong parking tickets came from wards close to downtown. The top five wards are Somerset, Rideau-Vanier, Capital, Kitchissipi and College. The city of Ottawa says there are no other particular reasons behind except that those wards have more volume of traffic due to a big number of businesses and offices.
Source: City of Ottawa Open Data.
In another case, Aaron was driving his handicapped friend who had a parking permit for handicaps. He was ticketed for exceeding allowed time in a one hour zone downtown despite a handicap permit that allows parking whenever for four hours. Again, he was able to have his ticket waived after complaining to the city of Ottawa.
Very few people go to court to contest parking tickets because they are usually a small amount of money. Defence lawyer John Allan says he hasn’t received anyone seeking legal services related to parking tickets in about 1o years of his career.
The city of Ottawa recognizes the problem of wrong tickets and says usually officers indicate wrong infraction, wrong plate number or a wrong street. There are also rare cases where people complain because someone got a ticket and put it one someone else’s car.
However, the city of Ottawa doesn’t see this as a big problem and there are no special measures being considered to address the issue.
Troy Leeson, deputy chief of bylaw services in charge pf parking at the city of Ottawa says wrong tickets issues in two years are relatively few compared to an overall number of about 1.2 million tickets issued in the same period. He advises people to approach the city whenever there they have good explanations to why they shouldn’t be ticketed.
“It’s a process that can weed out the ticket of an error was made, at the same time it gives an opportunity to somebody to exercise their rights to contest the charge they don’t agree with,” Troy said.