Residents in the southwest Calgary community of Marda Loop are upset with the pile of parking tickets they’re getting and they say poor signage is to blame.

Marda Loop residents say they’ve been seeing a persistent problem of parking tickets along a familiar route in the community.

22 Street, approaching 33 Avenue S.W. is not designated a one-way street, but drivers are prevented from turning a certain direction on it by signs and barriers.

With the road this way, drivers should logically park facing south but, for the last decade, people who parked facing south on the east side got tickets, so residents started to park facing the opposite direction.

However, that all changed once Lee Snethun, who has lived there for seven years, got a ticket for parking facing north on the route.

“There was no signage and that’s the way we’ve been parking as a precedent for many years,” he said.

He confronted the Calgary Parking Authority about the ticket and officials told him that parking south was the correct way.

Once he and everyone else on the street parked south, all of the residents were handed tickets.

“It’s like dealing with an illogical bureaucracy and they’re not representing the citizens that pay their salaries and fund the CPA that we do need to regulate our traffic parking.”

Another resident, Linda Lavoie, parked facing both directions over a two week period and ended up getting a ticket for each position, both signed by the same traffic officer.

“It’s maddening. I don’t know which way to park and I am still getting tickets,” she said.

The Calgary Parking Authority, in an email, confirmed that the road in question is indeed a two-way street and cars on the east side should face north.

As for the residents who got ticket for both instances, the CPA said it was a mistake.

“Any tickets issued to residents by enforcement under the impression [that this road section] is a one-way street have been issued in error and we apologize.”

As for proper signage being posted in the area, the CPA told residents that it was not their jurisdiction to do so; that reponsibility lay with the city.

When asked, city officials told residents that it was simply too expensive to post signage on such a small stretch of road.

Meanwhile, anyone who got a ticket from parking the wrong way on the street should consider appealing their fine.