The tulips aren’t out yet, but at least the overnight winter parking ban is over.
The city-wide ban was supposed to run until March 30, but it was lifted at midnight last night.
“Once the weather appears to be getting nicer and we don’t seem to be having the bad weather, they feel they can safely lift the ban,” said HRM spokeswoman Deborah Story, hopefully not jinxing anything.
And if there is another winter storm, the city will ask everyone to park off the streets.
“We know (the ban) causes some hardship for people so we feel we can lift it now because it seems we haven’t had too much bad weather and it doesn’t seem to stay if we do get snow,” Story said.
From the time the ban took effect (Dec. 15) to March 3, there were 17,468 tickets issued. At $25 a ticket, that translates into $436,700 in revenue for the city.
Story said that money goes into the municipal services pot.
While the HRM has had an overnight winter parking ban in the past, it is somewhat rare. But looking back over the winter months, Story said it was a good decision.
“It helped us with being able to get snow removed more efficiently. It was put in place as a safety factor … because we can’t clear the streets properly,” she said. “When you look at the number of tickets, if we didn’t have it how many people were parking on the streets.”
There is still a provincial overnight winter parking ban in effect which restricts on-street parking on streets in the former County of Halifax. These are streets maintained by the province and this ban will be lifted at the end of the month.
