I am a resident of the City of Guelph, and I am concerned about the possibility of overnight parking becoming unrestricted in the city. I understand that council has agreed to consider doing an evaluation to consider this option.
Overnight parking during the summer months is already an issue in my neighbourhood. There are a great number of households that routinely park their vehicles on the road, even though their homes do in fact have garages and driveways. This creates a safety hazard for my family, and especially for the large number of Seniors on our side of the road (the North side). First of all, backing out of our driveways is almost impossible, as our vision is blocked by the vehicles parked on either side of our driveways. The only way to exit our driveways is to go extremely slowly, inching out hoping that no other vehicles are coming down the road, and if they are, hopefully they will see us in time to stop. This is an accident waiting to happen. The cars fill every open curb space, right up to the very edge of our driveways. There are usually pick-up trucks and vans parked along the road also, which make it even more difficult for us exiting our driveways.
The other issue is when vehicles are parked directly across from our driveway entrances. In combination with the ones parked on our side of the road, it is almost impossible to accomplish the angle required to enter and exit our driveways without hitting one of these vehicles.
We all look forward to November first every year, when we finally get a break from the hassles of entering and exiting our driveways when we have no way of checking for oncoming traffic. If City Council decides to allow overnight parking year-round, the chances of accidents will increase two-fold. Also, how will our snow ever be cleared from the ends of our driveways when there are vehicles blocking the snowplough from ploughing 24 hours a day? The other issue I anticipate will be when we begin using the new waste carts. The directions from the city are to place the carts one metre apart, away from any parked vehicles. This will be impossible on our street, as the only open spaces are the openings of our driveways! Are we expected to put the carts there, and manually get out to move them back and forth when we enter and exit our driveways on collection days? Remember, there are many Seniors on our road, and this is not a reasonable expectation.
I would appreciate it if you could represent our concerns in your dealings with council and the city of Guelph around this issue.CR