With residential snow-clearing operations over for now, people are free to park anywhere they want in Winnipeg, but that wasn’t the case this past weekend when nearly 7,000 parking tickets were written.
Many of those tickets landed on the windshields of people out running errands or visiting friends.
The city frequently touts it’s Know Your Zone program but people tell CTV News they feel they need to know all the zones if they plan to spend anytime outside their own neighbourhoods.
"If I'm showing a dozen properties a day, trying to keep all the snow ban areas straight could be an issue,” said realtor Liz Taylor.
"We have clients that tend to park on side streets, as opposed to right on Academy, and if they're not aware of the parking ban for the area they're visiting that could impact them as well."
The city’s mayor says he’s willing to listen to ideas about how to make parking restrictions around snow clearing operations more clear, but for now he puts the onus on drivers to work within the current system.
"All I can say is people should really take the time to visit the website - visit Winnipeg.ca. Know what your zone is, and do all you can to ensure that you don't have to pay a ticket,” said Brian Bowman.
The map on the city’s website does have all the zones labelled but has been criticized for being difficult to read and loading slowly on mobile devices.
"If they had a permanent sign with the zone that it belonged to and it was broadcast 'Today, it's Zone F' then you'd know this street that I'm going to park on is Zone F. I shouldn't park here,” said Taylor. “Or you could make an app for that."
