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Fire lane parking violations. Fire Marshal's / Inspectors please respond...

wfd1366

Member
Joined
Nov 29, 2011
Messages
14
In our local ordinance we have the ability to have fire lane parking violators ticketed or towed (as most of you probably have the same authority). Personally I would just rather tow them. At this time we have a semi truck that drops off goods to a store and is consistently parked in the lane for up to 4 hours at a time and the other local businesses are also getting upset with this (blocks a heavily used alley). Fire Marshal's / Inspectors please give me ideas of how you handle this. Keep in mind, we have no ticket book or anything like a Police Officer would have to just place under a windshield wiper. Thanks in advanced.
 
so you have an ordiance to ticket for parking in fire lane

but no citation book to do it with??

And the ordinace to tow a vehicle,, so if you wanted a vehicle towed would you call the tow truck or would you have to call the police???

sounds like call the police and have them ticket the vehicle once, and tow on next violation,, no places out of fire lane to unload, no shipping recieving area near the stock room????
 
A few questions:

1) What is the alternative for the business to receive it goods?

2) Since the truck is actively loading/unloading (just like UPS/Fedex/USPS) and the driver is right there to move it in an emergency, what is the big deal?

3) Do you have a time limit for other delivery vehicles? Have you cited other drivers in the past?

4) Is the delivery truck always the same truck, same company, same driver?

Do you have any clue what is involved with getting a tractor trailer towed?

Personally I think this is too much BS and not enough talk and communication with the business getting deliveries and coming up with a plan that works for everyone. Delivery vehicles are a normal part of business and there has to be an alternative. Proper planning commission and zoning would have eliminated this issue to begin with so why punish a business if there is not enough room to get deliveries because the municipality failed to plan ahead.

Just my opinion.
 
Agree do not ticket Fed ex but they are not there for four hours or even an hour

Park out of the fire lane and push the load to the store a few more feet

Sounds like they need to hire some lumpers
 
If you can't resolve it through education, have your Police Department begin writing tickets under the violations portion of their ordinances for city code violations and provide them with the adopted fire code reference number applicable for fire lane access obstruction (Example for IFC 503.4 Obstruction of fire apparatus access roads.)

Also photograph with time stamp and contact the trucking company to inform them that this has been a historic practice not permitted and more citations will follow.............
 
Communication can be a powerful thing, like maybe providing a time say earlier in the am for deliveries or pick ups, so as not to hinder other business's. just a thought. as we have similar situations in our city, not so much for fire lanes but for traffic control.
 
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