Of the top 50 complaints to Edmonton’s 311 line in 2025, more than 40 per cent were related to parking, city data shows. The number one complaint was abandoned vehicles, with the city recording 20,570 concerns to its 311 line last year, a city memo published in April shows.
City says abandoned vehicles topped the list with 20,570 reports
Natasha Riebe · CBC News
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Parking can be a hot button issue and city data shows Edmontonians are not shy about reporting problems.
Of the issues on top 50 complaints to Edmonton’s 311 line in 2025, more than 40 per cent were related to parking, city data shows.
The top complaint was abandoned vehicles, with the city recording 20,570 concerns to its 311 line last year, a city memo published in April shows.
The second highest on the list was parking safety and other issues, getting 19,646 registered concerns, and the third was parking on private property, with 5,451 reports.
The ‘parking — safety and other,’ serves as a catch-all category and includes a variety of issues, such as vehicles parked too close to an intersection, vehicles parked too close to a fire hydrant, or a blocked driveway.
Other parking-related complaints include vehicle obstructing regular traffic flow (3,998 reports), and vehicle parked overtime (3,438 reports).
After parking, the most common complaints to 311 are related to animal control and property and nuisance issues, including snow removal and neighbourhood safety.
Alan Le, the city’s superintendent of parking enforcement, said he’s not surprised that parking complaints generated so many 311 reports.
“We've been seeing this trend for a while. Citizens, they're more educated with parking, they're passionate about folks that shouldn't be parking in their area and we're seeing that they're reporting it more.”
Le said Edmonton is still a very car-focused city but that "we're trying to convert that into more multimodal. But a lot of these residential communities still rely on vehicles as their way of transportation.”
Le said some people may not realize that leaving a vehicle on the street for 72 consecutive hours without moving it is considered abandoned.
Ashley Salvador, Ward Métis councillor in the city’s northeast, said she gets a lot of reports about people parking in inappropriate areas.
“Sometimes they'll park up on boulevards or on people’s private property where they shouldn't be,” Salvador said in an interview earlier this month. “I hear those complaints quite frequently and a desire for more consistent enforcement efforts and presence in those areas.”
Salvador is asking city administration to give council a breakdown of how much it would cost to assign more bylaw officers to deal with parking infractions and whether the fine amounts are sufficient.
“That’s where some of my questions come in, not only about enforcement capacity and being able to have boots on the ground in those communities, but also the fine amounts and whether that is acting as an adequate deterrent.”
She asked for a report on the parking situation, which is due to be presented to a council committee at a meeting Aug. 31.
Lack of tow lot partly to blame
Le also said the high number of complaints about abandoned vehicles can be attributed, in part, to the city not having access to the tow lot off the Yellowhead Trail for almost a year.
The impound lot at 122nd Street and 124th Street became full and the overflow parcel of land wasn't available, as construction crews were using it as a staging area for the Yellowhead Trail freeway conversion project.
“I think that it is a huge factor because what happens is that with us not being able to tow vehicles, citizens are seeing that … they're following up with more 311 inquiries, more status updates on when it's going to get towed,” Le said.
Le expects the number of reports about abandoned vehicles will go down in 2026, since 150 spaces became available at the tow lot this year. (LINK)
Tickets don’t match complaints
The number of complaints reported to 311 doesn’t align with the number of tickets city bylaw officers gave out for infractions.
In 2025, city bylaw officers issued 114,059 tickets for parking infractions under the city bylaw or the provincial Traffic Safety Act.
About 35 per cent of those — 39,888 tickets — were issued for ‘Insufficient Payment in Epark Zones, a category that is not included on the 311 list.
Less than one per cent — 986 tickets — were issued for abandoned vehicles even though this was the number one complaint to the city’s 311 line.
And about one per cent of total — 1,287 tickets — only were issued for the third highest complaint about parking on private property.
The city did not provide an estimated amount of revenue it collected from tickets in 2025, saying the ticket and data collection are complex.
However, with a base $50 fine for payment infractions, the city would have collected at least $1 million for EPark violations in 2025, and at least $5.7 million for all tickets.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Natasha Riebe landed at CBC News in Edmonton after radio, TV and print journalism gigs in Halifax, Seoul, Yellowknife and on Vancouver Island. Please send tips in confidence to natasha.riebe@cbc.ca.
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