Nearly half of the roughly 2,500 parking fines issued each year in Surrey – some 46 per cent of them – aren’t paid.
This is contained in a corporate report from Scott Neuman, Surrey’s manager of engineering, that came before council on Nov. 3 asking the politicians to approve a new off-street pay parking and EV charging regulation bylaw for City of Surrey-owned parking including parkades and surface lots. The City operates roughly 2,000 pay-parking spaces and 90 public electric charging stations.
Council gave third-reading approval to the related bylaws.
“It’s frustrating that 46 per cent of people who receive tickets don’t pay them, I mean, that’s frustrating,” Coun. Harry Bains said, “but I understand from the City’s perspective it’s likely not cost-effective to go after somebody for a parking ticket considering we have to go through provincial court. So it’s good to see that we’re streamlining the process, putting some more bite into our bylaw, giving more bite to our bylaw officers and moving to a streamlined adjudication process.”
Parking enforcement of these are done by a third-party operator on the City’s behalf.
“Violations are issued by the operator, and unpaid or disputed violations must be pursued through other means such as collections or through the provincial court,” Neuman told council. “This approach is complex, resource-intensive, and often ineffective, as disputes rarely proceed to court. While bylaws exist for regulating on-street parking, the City does not currently have bylaws that govern off-street facilities or electric vehicle charging. This limits enforcement effectiveness and creates inconsistency between on-street and off-street practices.
Neuman said the newly developed parking regulations policy – with the bylaw to come into effect in Jan. 1, 2027 following a year of “transition planning and implementation” – is intended to “improve fairness, safety, and consistency in managing EV charging and parking in off-street facilities and will establish clear legal rights and dispute resolution mechanisms supported by enforceable penalties.”
Under the new policy, the general manager of engineering is authorized to revoke a parking permit when a fine payment remains outstanding for 90 days or more after it comes due and if a vehicle is impounded and its registered owner fails to pay costs, fees and other expenses the City incurs within 30 days of the impoundment “the City may seek to recover its fees, costs and expenses via public auction or proceedings within the Supreme Court of British Columbia.”
Moreover, the new rules stipulate that “where an offence is a continuing offence, each day that the offence is continued shall constitute a separate and distinct offence.”
Bains asked if the streamlined adjudication process is similar to the civil resolution tribunal.
Philip Huynh, city hall’s solicitor, replied that the new bylaw will move the fining and parking process “into an adjudication process like our other bylaw violations. It’s generally handled through an adjudicator short of a provincial court process, so it’s more efficient in that sense.”
As for EV charging, Neuman added, there is no time limit for that – people can connect and charge for as long as they want as the City charges by hour, not by kilowatt.
“What this bylaw is doing is currently there is no ticketing mechanism for the City to maybe ticket a vehicle that is parked and not charging – they might have the cord plugged in but they’re not actively charging, they’re just using that parking space as a parking space. So then the City is losing out on a revenue opportunity. So this bylaw gives the City the mechanism to ticket and then enforce that,” Neuman explained.