A lack of parking near a government facility in Gloucester is leading one City Councillor to have no parking signs installed on a nearby street.
Beacon Hill-Cyrville Councillor Tim Tierney tells CFRA’s Ottawa Now he’s heard complaints from the residents of Leigh Crescent, near Ogilvie and Bathgate, about people parking for long hours on their street. Tierney says first responders and city crews have also expressed concerns, saying the street can become too narrow for their vehicles to safely traverse.
“We can’t get emergency vehicles up there. The garbage truck can’t up the street. It’s going to create a major situation for people one day very soon,” Tierney says.
It’s also a problem for snow removal crews.
The headquarters of the Communications Security Establishment of Canada and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service are across Bathgate from Leigh.
Tierney says these facilities do not have enough parking for their employees, leading to spillover onto residential streets.
“In 2012, CSIS and CSEC got together to build a bigger facility,” Tierney says. “It was the first stab as a federal government public-private partnership project in 60 years. So, when they built this, essentially, they didn’t include enough parking and now my neighbourhood is paying the price.”
By-law services have had their hands full with the area, handing out over 1300 tickets in 2016 on Leigh Crescent and five other nearby streets, to vehicles parking for longer than the three-hour limit.
More than 1800 tickets were issued in the area in 2015.
In a letter Tierney was handing out on Friday, he says due to these issues no parking signs will be going up on Leigh Crescent.
“Signs will be installed on the inside of Leigh Crescent in the next couple of weeks. The reason the no parking signs are being installed on the inside of the crescent is because all of the fire hydrants are located on that side of the roadway,” the letter reads.
Tierney admits the no parking signs are not a permanent solution.
“The problem with this whole thing, and not being able to make certain streets no parking, is that they’re just going to move to another street,” Tierney says. “It’s high time the federal government gets on board and fixes this situation once and for all.”
CSIS and CSEC encourage their employees to take public transit or carpool as often as possible, but Tierney says the parking problems show that message is not being heard.
“They have to look at how many employees they have in that place,” Tierney says. “The argument about them taking the bus sounds great and wonderful, but nobody’s taking the bus. These people enjoy driving to work. I don’t see that changing and the only solution, in my mind, is to either establish a parking garage or work with local partners in the community to get parking for these people.”
Tierney says Mauril Bélanger was looking into this issue as the area MP before his death last year.
He’s now encouraging residents to bring the issue up with federal candidates ahead of the by-election to fill Bélanger’s vacant seat. A date has yet to be announced. The government has until February 19 to announce one.