Vancouver man issued parking ticket seconds after stopping car

Ever received a ticket just seconds after parking your car? That’s what happened to a Vancouver man who was sitting in his car for less than a minute when a parking enforcement officer wrote him up.

“As soon as I stopped. Literally, the second I stopped the parking maid was right there. We caught eyes and then she walked away,” Sean Kohnke told Global News.

Kohnke said he was delivering lunch to his girlfriend at work near 1100 Cordova St. when he pulled over to wait for her.

He texted his girlfriend at 2:47 p.m. telling her he’d arrived. The time stamp on the ticket shows it was issued at 2:48 p.m.

Kohnke said he was never actually handed a physical ticket from the officer. He only learned he’d received a ticket after going home and checking the City of Vancouver website.

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“She wrote me up a ticket pretty much as soon as I stopped my car. Didn’t give me any warning, didn’t say ‘you can’t park here,’ nothing. Just saw my car and wanted to make a quota.”

After learning of the ticket, he drove back to the area, found the meter maid and confronted her.

“Why did you write me a ticket? I dropped off lunch to my girlfriend, two seconds, you didn’t even tell me I couldn’t park there,” he said in a video of the exchange.

Kohnke was penalized for stopping in front of or within 1.5 metres of a private road, boulevard crossing or sidewalk crossing.

A picture taken by the by-law officer as evidence shows his car parked behind a sign post but not obstructing the driveway, with Kohnke still in the driver’s seat.

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The City of Vancouver collected $17 million in parking ticket revenue last year.

Just this month it quietly jacked up fines by the equivalent of 20 per cent. Last year, the early payment discount was 50 per cent, now it’s only 40 per cent.

Kohnke now owes the City $60, if he pays by Feb. 7.