Vivian Moreau

News staff

Henderson Road residents who park on side streets during the designated hours that they can't park on their own street shouldn't be getting ticketed.

Oak Bay's mayor brought up an unexpected side-effect of parking restrictions put into place this year. The rules were brought in to allow cycling lanes on the street that serves as a busy connector to the University of Victoria campus. Parking restrictions came into effect this summer to allow for dedicated cycle lanes between 7 a.m and 7 p.m.

Henderson Road residents with full driveways were initially told they or their visitors could park on side streets. But some have been ticketed for parking more than two hours on Kendal Avenue and Avondale Road, the mayor said.

"I hadn't realized we were breaking a bylaw by encouraging them to park (indefinitely) on the side streets," Christopher Causton said.

Causton proposed a bylaw amendment that would allow Henderson Road residents to park on the side streets for longer than two hours.

Coun. John Herbert thought, however, that residents on the side streets should be asked for their opinion about increased parking in their neighbourhood.

"If they have trucks and buses parking there all the time they might not be too happy," Herbert said.

But Mayor Causton didn't want to go that far.

"We'd go back to square one if we did that. Let's go ahead," he said.

Council asked staff to draft a parking regulations bylaw so that Henderson Road residents may be allowed to park longer than two hours on side streets off the artery. Once the amendment is passed, those residents will likely be given some sort of parking permit to place on their dash so bylaw officers will know not to ticket them, Loranne Hilton, the municipality's clerk, said later.

Residents in the Henderson Road area have been dealing with parking issues since the restrictions were put in place.

"I do notice that cars are often parked on the sidewalk," said Glen Irwin, who lives in the 3400-block of Henderson Road. "So now the new problem is cars parking on the sidewalks and blocking them."

Irwin said the problems frequently occur at supper hour, after Oak Bay's bylaw officer has gone home for the day but before the 7 p.m. parking curfew has ended.

"We had an estate sale across the road and the line-up of cars was parked on the sidewalk basically," Irwin said.

Irwin is supportive of the bike lanes, however. A cyclist himself, he's seen an increasing number of cyclists using the lanes.

"I think it's a great improvement and a good step forward."

vmoreau@saanichnews.com