Commercial vehicles don’t sit idle in Fruitvale’s urban residential zone since the village amended its zoning bylaw to take large commercial vehicles out of this area.
Following complaints from residents, Fruitvale council has modified its bylaw to eliminate safety and noise concerns by ridding drivers from parking large work trucks or semis in quiet, tightly knit neighbourhoods.
“(Formerly) the zoning bylaw allowed for these kinds of trucks to be parked for six hours in a residential zone,” said Lila Cresswell, Fruitvale’s chief administrative officer. “This is to say basically, ‘No parking in a residential zone. Park your truck downtown in a commercial area and get somebody to pick you up or walk home.’”
The change doesn’t mean that a service vehicle can’t park outside a house on Maple or Walnut street during the day.
“It’s basically because when you park a large commercial property in somebody’s driveway, either you are going to wake them up in the morning when you start up or you’re going to be blocking sight lines,” Cresswell added. “Part of it is safety and part of it is the nuisance factor.”
Fruitvale’s bylaw enforcement is done on a complaint basis, so if the neighbourhood doesn’t seem to mind, then council doesn’t consider it an issue.
“We always work toward compliance and 90 per cent of people comply, and the rest just don’t know the rules and if they don’t comply then of course there is a bylaw ticketing process,” added Cresswell. “We have been very fortunate; we haven’t had to do ticketing.”
