Top Vancouver realtor describes the situation as ’embarrassing,’ but says ‘I think it’s just a cost of being busy’
Chad Skelton
Sun
Hummers are ticketed nine times as often as Smart cars. Photograph by: Roger Watanabe, Vancouver sun
Realtor Bob Rennie, known by many as Vancouver‘s “condo king,” may have to get used to another nickname: the prince of parking tickets.
Using parking-violation data for the past five years, The Vancouver Sun compiled a list of the 10 most-ticketed licence plates in the city.
Nine of those plates belong to commercial vehicles such as armoured cars and parcel-delivery trucks, which often find themselves dinged for stopping where they shouldn’t.
Only one of the 10 is a personal vehicle: Bob Rennie’s luxury car.
Since Jan. 1, 2004, Rennie has racked up 204 parking tickets.
Almost all of the tickets are for sitting at an expired meter and more than a third were received in the block where Rennie’s office is located.
In fact, 37 of the tickets were written at the exact same meter: the one right in front of Rennie’s office.
“It’s embarrassing,” Rennie conceded. “But I think it’s just a cost of being busy.”
Rennie said he doesn’t even drive the ticketed car to work that often.
He said he couldn’t recall how much he paid for it (the retail price is upwards of $150,000).
Rennie said that on the rare days he drives the car to work, he finds it convenient to park right by his office and usually pays by phone for the first couple of hours.
But then he gets busy with meetings or phone calls and forgets to plug the meter.
City records show Rennie has paid all his tickets and he says he never gives the parking officers who ticket him a hard time.
“The guys are doing their jobs,” he said. “I don’t get upset when I get a ticket.”
Rennie refused to say exactly how much he has spent on parking tickets — other than it’s “too much” — but, assuming he paid each ticket within 34 days, the total bill is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $6,000.
Rennie’s not convinced he has spent that much more on tickets than he would have if he’d parked in a downtown lot.
“If you just broke it down in business terms, if I kept a parking spot in a Triple A location, in Wall Centre or at Bentall Centre, it would far exceed — or be equal to — the sporadic tickets,” he said. “And [you have] the convenience of parking exactly where you want.”
Nonetheless, Rennie said he’ll be more careful about his parking in the future.
“I think that I should just start dialing up that number and paying for the parking,” he said, then added jokingly: “[Or] maybe I should negotiate with the city and see if I can buy that meter.”
The parking-violation data obtained by The Sun included the licence plate number, and make, for every ticketed vehicle, but not the owner’s name.
Aside from Rennie — who The Sun was able to track down because he drives an unusual vehicle and was ticketed so close to his office — the identity of most of the other worst parkers remains a mystery.
However, court records reviewed by The Sun reveal that the absolute worst parker on the list — with 446 tickets in all — is an armoured car owned by Brink’s Canada.
Those same court records show Brink’s owns two other vehicles in the Top 20, with 184 and 161 tickets.
No. 3 on the list, with 344 tickets, just happened to be ticketed by parking officer Steve Goldie when a Sun reporter and photographer were tagging along on his Robson rush-hour route.
It, too, is a Brink’s armoured car.
Brink’s Canada refused to comment for this story.
Like the owners of the other vehicles in the top 10, records show Brink’s has paid most of its tickets.
Given the company’s history with parking tickets, that’s not surprising.
In 2005, Brinks got into hot water when it went to Vancouver traffic court on 99 separate tickets received by its armoured vehicles.
The company admitted it committed the violations, but argued it should get a 50-per-cent break on the fines, noting that in other cities, such as Toronto, armoured cars are exempt from parking rules.
“Well, that is Toronto,” justice of the peace Zahid Makhdoom said in his judgment. “We don’t live in Toronto, we live in Vancouver.”
Makhdoom noted that while he was inclined to give a break to people who appeared in his court with one or two violations, he had little sympathy for a company with nearly 100 tickets.
“Brink’s Canada is not engaged in some sort of altruistic pursuit such as a ‘meals on wheels’ program. They are not delivering food from a soup kitchen to some infirm person’s home. … They are transferring money from point A to B for profit,” Makhdoom said.
“In my respectful view, when a for-profit corporation knowingly breaks the law and then uses the judicial system to get away from it while clogging the court system, [it] must be subjected to a reasonable penalty.”
Rather than giving the company a break, Makhdoom decided to increase the fines, to $75 for each meter offence and $200 for each other ticket.
In total, the company was on the hook for up to $19,000.
Makhdoom also warned the company not to appear before him again, saying if it showed up a second time with a “stack of tickets” like that, he would consider imposing the maximum penalty for each one: $2,000.
Parking Secret No. 8: Night owls can rest easy. The first shift of parking officers starts at 6:15 a.m. and the last clocks off at 10:30 p.m. There are some exceptions for special events, but for the most part there is little to no parking enforcement overnight. However, this could change: a report has gone to city council proposing a new shift that would run until 2 a.m.
Parking Secret No. 9: A five-minute grace period exists in most no-parking areas, such as permit zones and commercial loading areas, so you’re allowed to stop briefly to pick someone up or drop them off. That also means a parking officer has to observe you sitting in such a spot for at least five minutes before writing you a ticket. Be warned, though: no such grace period exists for areas where you’re not allowed to stop at all — like rush-hour routes or bus zones — or for spots with a meter.
Parking Secret No. 10: All parking meters are not created equal. Downtown, where there are dedicated meter-checking foot patrols, the typical meter is usually checked by a parking officer at least once every two hours. In contrast, the meters along Commercial Drive and in Kerrisdale don’t have dedicated foot patrols and so may be checked as little as once a day.
Parking Secret No. 11: If you’re going to park illegally, don’t put on your four-way flashers. It provides no legal protection and just draws attention to your offence. “What it says to me is: I know it’s illegal, but I’m only doing it for awhile,” said parking officer Sherry Wevill.
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