Juanita Ivings is seeking a little sympathy from city hall for Sapperton residents who are surrounded by construction.
The Fader Street resident told the Record it’s been challenging for lower Sapperton residents to find parking because of construction projects at Royal Columbian Hospital, the Brewery District and at Braid and Brunette, as well as sewer separation work being done in the neighbourhood.
“It’s absolutely crazy. We have so much going on in the neighbourhood. It’s like total chaos,” she said. “There is piles of dirt in places, there is piles of rocks in places. There is every vehicle you could think of to rip up the street. It is just mad chaos.”
While crews tear up streets for the sewer separation project, she said many homeowners are unable to park anywhere near their homes.
“People are upset because there is nowhere to park because they are ripping up our roads. I am told I am not allowed to park on my street from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. Then I can’t park on my side street because there is no parking there either, so I need to go onto other people’s streets and try and get in there and do some parking,” she said. “We have one guy who flies out of his house and punches people in the head.”
With no place to park, Ivings recently parked her vehicle on the boulevard next to her house, headed to work on SkyTrain and came home to find a parking ticket on the windshield.
“Homeowners are struggling just to find parking because of this project. I am just asking for some leniency,” said Ivings, who pays for an annual parking permit to park in front of her home. “I don’t know if I go one block up or one block down if I’d get ticketed for being on the wrong road.”
Nancy Millar, acting coordinator of parking and animal services, said some residents may request leniency, while others want more enforcement, particularly if construction vehicles are parking in the neighbourhood without permits.
“You can’t pick and choose on a street who you are going to enforce and who you are not going to enforce. You have to enforce fairly and evenly,” she said. “If you are going to do the 400 block of Fader Street, you can’t say, ‘I am not going to ticket that vehicle because I’m pretty sure he lives there’ and ‘This vehicle I’m not sure about, so I’m going to give him a ticket.’”
Millar said parking patrol officers have offered some leniency when parking permit holders in one area are parked a bit further away than their permit allows.
“An officer that sees a vehicle parked on a boulevard, they can’t not do something about that if they are there enforcing the street. That would be something they would probably write a ticket for,” she said. “We might look at their dispute – but that’s a different situation.”
Millar said the parking division generally gets its direction from the engineering department, which may ask that officers relax enforcement if major projects are taking place.
Ivings believes the city needs to do a better job of coordinating construction activities in neighbourhoods.
With the streets already being ripped up for the sewer work, Ivings said she was shocked to get a notice on a Friday stating that city crews were coming in to work on the boulevard trees the following week and residents couldn’t park on the road.
“I’d like the city to communicate better, to plan better, and at least show a little leniency for the people who actually live there and need to park,” she said.
