Snow route parking ban likely lifting Tuesday

There’s a good chance Calgarians won’t have to worry about getting a ticket for parking on a snow route come Tuesday afternoon because the City of Calgary’s roads department says it’s on track to lift the parking ban early.

“The roads are really looking good. We’ve seen the sun helping us out, and we’ve got every piece of equipment that we can muster out there,” said Roads Maintenance Manager Bill Biensch.

Plows were close to 80 per cent finished clearing Priority 2 routes as of early Monday afternoon after snowfall that started on Thursday produced 20 to 30 centimetres of accumulation in parts of Calgary.

Biensch said crews have been keeping up with record amounts of snow by calling in reinforcements.

“We do see a lot of snow along a lot of our pedestrian routes, and in some of our residential areas, there’s significant ruts, rutting and deep snow. Unfortunately, we don’t have the resources to jump in. For the last half a month we’ve actually been contacting a lot of contractors,” he said.

Since the snow route parking ban went into effect at 10 a.m. on Sunday, 1,056 tickets were issued to drivers who didn’t move their vehicles. Unlike the two bans in February, the Calgary Parking Authority towed vehicles this time around. Seven were seized as of noon on Monday.

“We’re towing the ones that pose a safety concern, whether it be in the middle of a lane of traffic, etc.,” said Kevin Bulmer with the CPA. “What we’ve also found is we’ve got vehicles that on the routes that still have tickets from the previous snow events. So in this case, it’s obvious that there is no compliance and we’ve been seizing these vehicles.”

During two snow route parking bans in February, more than 4,600 tickets were issued.