I am the City of Toronto’s newest recipient of a $60 parking ticket in recognition of the outstanding work I did parking to the right of this sign. Whereas there was a parking sign with an arrow that typically indicates parking is allowed there was also little ‘no stopping’ sign pointing to one direct which I presume apparently overrides the other sign? But what I can’t understand is if there really is no parking allows to the right of that sign, why didn’t they use one of these signs instead? I am referring to the sign in the bottom right corner which shows parking is allowed only to the left of the sign. Would the use of that sign not have been much more appropriate? Is there something I’m missing?
No, you aren’t missing anything. Trust me on this; it’s a combination of incompetence and general lack of caring. There’s no logic behind it.
If you fight the ticket, you’ll probably win. But they assume, usually correctly, that most people don’t bother to fight tickets, so they don’t really care if the signs make sense or not.
I think I’d yank that second set of signs out and drop them on the sidewalk.
No parking to the right of the sign ever.
No parking to the left 3:30 - 6:30 PM on weekdays
No stopping on either side, 7:30 - 9:30 AM, which usually also disallows parking.
Next time, I’ll take the bus.
Just to be absolutely clear – you paid for the parking, right? I.e. you actually bought a ticket from the machine, you didn’t just park there without paying.
If so, then it’s stupid that they put the parking sign in that location. However…I can’t tell from the picture, but if you were trying to park too close to an intersection (that’s where I usually see those “no stopping” signs), then you probably deserved a ticket.
nm.
Looking at my post above, it’s a little garbled. Let me clarify:
It’s possible that the “no stopping” sign is there for no discernable reason, in which case you have my sympathy. But in my (Toronto) experience, that’s not generally the case. Usually there’s a sign posted because it’s indicating a Toronto by-law, such as “no stopping within 9 metres of a crosswalk”. The Green P sign just says that there’s pay parking on that street; it’s not overriding any City of Toronto by-laws. I.e., the sign is not implicitly allowing you to legally park near a crosswalk or in front of a fire hydrant even if it’s posted near a crosswalk or fire hydrant.
If you look at the sign in the lower right of the 2nd photo, there is a piece of tape covering the arrow pointing to the right to indicate permitted parking to the left, but not the right. The simple explanation would be that someone removed the similarly placed tape from the sign in question.
hogarth: Yes I bought a ticket, see http://i.imgur.com/om9od.jpg and there was no cross-walk or anything, here is a photo of how I parked. The ticket definitely stated the reason was “no stopping anytime”.
Stana Claus: I don’t know how (possibly due to the way google images shows a preview thumbnail) i managed to miss that detail but I think you may be on to something!!! I am now going to start paying attention to similar parking signs and looking for whether some of them use tape. If that is indeed the case then it could well explain what happened here, namely that they only have one type of parking sign for this situation and they tape-off one of the arrows if it does not apply but the tape fell off here.
I can’t tell how close you are to the intersection in that photo, but I’ll take your word for it. In that case, I think you have pretty good grounds for arguing against the ticket.
The columnist known as The Fixerat The Star might run with it. Why not give it a try. Send him the pic and your tale.