Shovel the space, keep the place? There’s a storm brewing over parking spots cleared on Toronto’s snow-clogged streets

Toronto residents with on-street parking are confronting a familiar dilemma: move their car and lose the spot they worked hard to clear.

Thestar.com
Jan. 20, 2022
Ben Spurr

No sooner had Lorna Yates hung up her shovel on Monday than she realized she was facing a chilly Catch-22.

She had worked hard to dig the family car out from the snow bank in front of her house. But while she’d freed her vehicle from its icy trap, she had walked right into another one -- if she actually drove the car anywhere, she risked someone else taking her spot.

To move it, in other words, would undoubtedly be to lose it.

As the dilemma dawned on her, Yates got “a sinking feeling,” she recalled in an interview.

“We’re so proud of the job that we got it dug out, that we now are paralyzed because we cannot afford to lose the spot,” she said. “We are terrified to move it, so we are not moving the car.”

As Torontonians burrow out from under a once-in-a-decade snowfall this week, thousands of residents who use on-street parking spaces are in a similar bind.

Some believe there’s an unwritten rule that a spot belongs to whoever clears it, while others argue once a space is snow-free it’s fair game for anyone. While the issue has been known to spark confrontations between storm-addled neighbours, the city confirmed Tuesday that on-street spaces are first-come, first-serve, and municipal officials are calling for neighbourly co-operation to help keep the parking peace.

Yates, a lawyer and mother of twin seven-year-olds, lives near Mount Pleasant and Eglinton, and feels particularly attached to the spot she cleared. Her husband had a heart attack last year, so shovelling duties primarily fall to her, and the work was painful due to a pinched nerve.

Such is the couple’s reluctance to lose their space that when Yates’s husband had a medical appointment Tuesday morning not too far from home, after a debate about “protecting the spot,” they agreed it was better if he walked. As of Tuesday afternoon, they were contemplating calling an Uber to take the kids to a play date, and she expects her vehicle will stay put until “the city comes and takes the snow away.”

“We’re going to hold out,” she said.

As badly as she wants to keep her place, Yates doesn’t think drivers who shovel out a space have a right to it. Or as she put it: “No dibs.”

Others take a different view. When Jen Tripp was a new mother about a decade ago she used to block off the parking space in front of her Riverdale home with construction cones after she’d cleared it.

“Sometimes it didn’t go so well,” she concedes. In one instance, “someone remarked that it was public property and that I should get stuffed.”

Tripp could often defuse the situation by confronting an angry driver while holding her baby on her hip. But since then her daughters have grown old enough to help with shovelling, and she’s given up the construction cones for a more co-operative approach. She and her neighbours went out together to clear the snow after dinner Monday night.

“It’s just a better choice in life to get along,” she said.

But while she doesn’t think a parking spot is worth fighting over, she believes whoever shovels a space should have a claim to it. “I think if somebody digs it out, they should have that spot. Or you should be willing to help with them digging out (a new one),” she said.

At a press conference Tuesday to address the city’s storm response, Barbara Gray, general manager of transportation services, said she’s had no reports of conflicts over space-saving efforts this week. But she said trying to reserve on-street spaces is against city rules, and could impede snow removal efforts if spot-saving objects are left in the right-of-way.

“I know it is frustrating for people who spent that time to dig out,” but on-street parking “is a resource that’s for everyone,” she said.

Mayor John Tory urged residents to band together to make sure there are enough spots for everyone in their neighbourhood.

“The Toronto way of doing things says a hundred times out of a hundred that you work out a co-operative arrangement with your neighbours, perhaps to, you know, shovel more spaces and make them available on a basis where we co-operate with each other as opposed to some kind of competition,” he said.