ALMOST 90 fines a week have been dished out to truck owners who park illegally in local streets and now there are calls for a “no nonsense” approach from the State Government “to rein in these urban cowboys”, including heftier fines and vehicle bans. TRUCK drivers overdoing their stay on local roads are on notice with Canterbury Bankstown Council calling for tougher fines and the vehicles of repeat offenders forced off the road for three months.
Deputy Mayor Rachelle Harika said the complaints from residents about trucks parking illegally, were loud and clear with safety and loss of parking spaces at the top of their grievances.
“The issue of heavy and long vehicles parking in our suburban neighbourhoods is still rife and it appears there is no will by the NSW Government to support councils by imposing tougher penalties,” she said.
“It’s time they were slapped with heavier penalties and other deterrents to stamp out this flagrant disregard of the road rules.”
Under NSW Road Laws, heavy vehicles (4.5 tonnes or more) and long vehicles (7.7 metres or longer) are not allowed to park in built up areas for more than one hour, unless otherwise permitted.
She said too many operators of these vehicles “have no respect, or regard for the law, or the community, and are happy to pay fines rather than park their vehicles in designated areas or holding yards”.
The council will write to the NSW Minister for Finance, Courtney Houssos, urging her to “urgently review the lenient fines” and again to Minister for Roads, John Graham – who is yet to reply to a letter from February – calling on him to introduce tougher new rules to deregister repeat offenders’ vehicles for three months.
In the past 12 months, the council issued 4,287 infringement notices, numbers that didn’t surprise Cr Harika, considering “the fine for parking longer than the hour is a measly $129 with no loss of point”.
Cr Linda Downey said there were also a lot of truck trailers being parked all over the place and it “has to stop”, while Cr Chris Cahill said it was the majority of the issues he got the most complaints about and “penalties need to reflect the seriousness of the issue”.
Cr Clare Raffan said she’s “had a gutful of people treating the area as a private area to park their trucks”.
“Residents are screaming about it and it will only stop if their (drivers) livelihood is put at risk,” she said.
“Our council is quite vigilant when it comes to policing these lawbreakers but is becoming increasingly frustrated by the number of repeat offenders.”
