Halifax snow clearing hampered by cars parked on streets

Snowplow operators had lots of parked cars to manoeuvre around Monday night as they attempted to clear Halifax streets following the first major snowfall in the city.

A high number of cars were parked on streets in every part of the city, said municipal spokeswoman Tiffany Chase, despite officials urging people not to park vehicles on roads overnight.

"It can become a concern because we are unable to push the snow to the curb, it reduces the lane width and potentially on some of our smaller network streets, say in the urban core, there could be concerns about emergency vehicle access," she said.

The city's overnight parking ban doesn't come into effect until Thursday, which means the municipality could not ticket or tow cars left on the street.

The ban forbids people from parking on public roads from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m., when the majority of snow clearing takes place.

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Police, however, do have the ability to ticket or tow vehicles any time a car might impede snow clearing or emergency vehicles under the Motor Vehicle Act.

The Halifax Regional Police are checking to see how many vehicles were ticketed Monday night. CBC News will have that information when it becomes available.

The overnight parking ban generally runs from Dec.15 to March 31 but can be extended if need be. The municipality said the ban didn't need to be put into effect Monday because it was the community's first major snowfall.

"I think with the first storm of any season what we often see is that people need to be reminded that it's winter again," said Chase.

"It might take residents a storm or two to get used to the fact that, 'Oh I really need to park my car off street.'"

The ban is only enforced when a storm or significant snowfall is forecast, said Chase. When the municipality decides to enforce the ban it releases a public announcement about 12hours ahead of time.