Robson and Burrard is ground zero for the rush-hour blitz

Chad Skelton, Vancouver Sun 

Robson and Burrard is ground zero for the rush-hour blitz

Source: City of Vancouver Parking Database

Maggie Wong Illustration / Vancouver Sun


To see all the stories in this series, our parking ticket database and an interactive parking hot-spots map, please visit Vancouversun.com/parking.

If there is a high noon in the constant battle between vehicle owners and parking officers, it is at 3:05 p.m. at the corner of Robson and Burrard.

No matter how much time you have left on your meter, if you're parked on the north side of Robson after 3 p.m. -- or one of the several other rush-hour routes throughout the city-- you're in a no-stopping zone and will be ticketed and towed.

As 3 p.m. approaches, parking officers throughout the city are assigned "rush routes" to clear.

Officers give car owners a five-minute grace period, but then start writing tickets and, with a simple tap on their hand-held computers, order each vehicle impounded.

Fully a third of all no-stopping tickets issued in the entire city are written in the half hour between 3:05 and 3:35 p.m.

That's more than 100,000 tickets since 2004 alone, or about 80 every weekday.

The upside for illegal parkers is that the focus on rush routes means enforcement of other offences, such as expired meters, dips between 3 and 4 p.m.

The fine for stopping in a no-stopping zone is $90 ($45 if you pay it within 34 days). And that's on top of the $59, plus GST, it will cost you to get your car out of the impound lot.

Buster's, the towing company contracted by the city to take away parking violators, isn't allowed to tow a vehicle until it's been ticketed. But they don't waste much time after that.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, as parking officer Steve Goldie started his rush route on Robson, a Buster's tow truck sat waiting in front of the first vehicle on the block.

The second Goldie's ticket hit the windshield, the truck backed up and lifted the car's front tires off the ground. The car was gone within a minute.

Most of the cars Goldie ticketed on Robson, and later on Davie, still had time left on their meters, in some cases as much as 20 or 30 minutes.

Goldie estimates about three-quarters of the vehicles towed during afternoon rush still have time left on their meters, presumably paid for by people who didn't realize they were in a rush-hour zone.

Sometimes, Goldie said, cars will even pull into a rush-hour spot as tow trucks are taking other vehicles away.

Goldie said part of the problem is that people think of streets such as Robson and Davie as shopping areas, and not major arterial roads such as Oak or Georgia.

If you use the city's pay-by-phone system, it won't accept payment for a rush-hour meter after 3 p.m.

However, there is no similar feature on the meters themselves: You could plug a fistful of change into a rush-hour meter at 2:59 p.m. and it would appear you had all the time in the world to park there.

Parking enforcement says it doesn't know of any way to program the meters to behave differently at rush hour.

Sherry Wevill, a parking enforcement officer, said the city's rush-hour routes are all well-marked: There are signs all the way down the street and even decals on the meters themselves, right where you put in the coins.

But she confessed she has a twinge of sympathy when she sees a car at a paid-up meter being towed away.

"I think the city has done everything they can to alert people to the times," she said. "But you do feel bad."



Wednesday, Feb. 25: Where people get tickets

Thursday, Feb. 26: When people get tickets

Friday, Feb. 27: The city's worst parkers

Saturday, Feb. 28: Fighting tickets in court

Online: See vancouversun.com/parking to search our parking ticket database.

To see our interactive parking hot-spots map, click here.

