A private parking lot company is cancelling a ticket issued by what appears to have been an overly eager enforcement officer in Vancouver.
The ticket was issued to Doug Atkinson, who parked his 1965 Chevrolet Malibu near Kitsilano Beach on Sunday afternoon.
Atkinson said he thought he'd done everything right, including feeding the meter nearby, and putting the receipt on his dashboard. But when he came back to his car, he found an parking patroller writing a ticket.
The $40 infraction was for “failure to park inside the lines.” His passenger's side tires were touching part of the white line dividing parking spaces in the lot managed by EasyPark.
The classic car is about 180 centimetres wide with 120-centimetre-wide doors, making it larger and more difficult to park than most modern vehicles.
Atkinson, however, said he wasn't encroaching on another spot, and had parked tight to the line to make sure there was room to open the large doors of his car.
“I wasn’t encroaching on another spot. I wasn’t encroaching on somebody else. I was giving extra room,” he told CTV News.
Atkinson said there were two other cars parked on lines in the lot, and neither had a ticket on the windshield.
He questioned the patroller, who told him she was just doing her job.
"I was astounded," Atkinson said.
While the ticket was only $40, the fine would go up to $100 if he didn't pay within the week. But Atkinson refused to pay it, saying he felt that the move was a cash grab.
"I'm going to go after the company and tell them this is absolutely ridiculous," he said.
Atkinson called EasyPark while CTV's David Molko was present. The customer service agent asked for his violation number, then told him there'd been a mistake.
The agent apologized, but added, "if your wheels were more over the line, it probably would be a valid violation."
EasyPark's Lincoln Merraro later told CTV that it was an unusual ticket issued by a new patroller who "made the wrong call." The officer is employed by Fusion Security, they said, a company EasyPark hires to conduct some of its patrol work.
"They're human, they're capable of making mistakes from time to time," Merraro said.
"A ticket for occupying two stalls is for when a vehicle is clearly occupying two stalls, and in this case, it wasn't."
EasyPark did not have an official policy posted, but said the decision to cancel Atkinson's ticket was common sense. Staff said a second vehicle was also issued a ticket for being over the line, and that ticket had been "forgiven" too.
