Residential parking. It is a strategy everyone has tried, or at least everyone who dreads trading off a portion of their hard-earned paychecks for a few hours of safety from parking control. Instead they take their car, park by the curb on a residential street, and enjoy the feeling of beating the system.

But there’s a catch.

Parked more than three hours between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.? You can be ticketed for that. Fines generally run about $30 according to data from Ottawa’s open data website. Since 2011, over 169 thousand tickets have been written up for cars exceeding the three-hour limit. It is the sixth highest parking violation in Ottawa.

Some readers may be confused – in the suburbs, places like Kanata and Barrhaven, residential streets often have cars parked on the side of the road. Friends visiting, people with full garages, or even those too lazy to pull into the driveway. Still, they’re rarely ticketed – no Barrhaven streets appear in even the top 50 ticketed, along with only one Kanata street (Hearst).

The city’s parking data shows violations are far more likely to be noticed, and fined, on residential streets near areas where many people conglomerate. Prime examples are university and college campuses, along with the ByWard Market. The most ticketed area is on Bathgate Drive, between Den Haag Drive and Montreal Road. In the past five years, 1921 tickets have been issued along that stretch of road for people parked more than three hours.

One of the complaints Ottawa has seen about the bylaw before is the obscureness. Not everyone knows it exists, and some people assume because there is no signage, they are free to park.

Monterey Drive – The Outlier

For the most part, the top 25 ticketed streets regarding this violation are located in the downtown core, or at least nearby. One street, however, sticks out from the rest – Monterey Drive.

Located in Nepean, just off Baseline Road, Monterey saw the 23rd highest number of tickets over the past five years, totalling 900. Unlike the other streets in the top 25, it was not downtown. Nor was it located near a university or college or even a shopping area.

According to Monterey resident Simon Callsen, the reason is due to the residential setup of the street.

“I know a lot of people are aware that the bylaw exists, including myself, but we choose to ignore it because we have more vehicles than our building allows, so everyone in our building parks on the street,” said Callsen.

Monterey’s housing has residents living in connected houses with no street access by car – no driveways, and just a single spot in the communal garage per household, said Callsen.

Usually, in Ottawa, situations like that can be dealt with. The city offers residential on-street parking permits for $30 a month in the summer, $140 in the winter. Callsen said he would get one – if his street offered it.

“If there was a permit available I would buy that permit but there is not,” said Callsen after admitting to parking on the street. “There’s a lot of streets nearby that do have public permits available, but Monterey from some reason doesn’t.”

So with no other options, the citizens of Monterey have been forced to adapt.

“Occasionally Bylaw does come and mark tires, but we all have a system where we warn each other when someone sees Bylaw and we all move our cars,” said Callsen. “When the officers do come by, we’re all going to get an email and a phone call warning us.”