Today I parked in Macintosh Street in Auchenflower and walked to work. I’ve parked in that street in nearly the same position more than a dozen times in the last few weeks without any issue.

When returning to my car this afternoon, I find that I’ve received a parking infringement notice. Initially I thought it was an actual parking ticket but after reading it later I find out that it is a warning and not an actual penalty notice! Who knew that parking inspectors could issue a warning – amazing!

First and foremost, I am totally impressed that the parking officer didn’t take the opportunity to penalise me – clearly I was doing something wrong but instead he/she chose to give me a warning – so impressed.

The offence listed on the ticket says:

Contrary to official traffic sign parking for a period longer than permitted maximum

That didn’t make a lot of sense to me, I’ve never noticed a parking sign in the area.

Wotif head office is located in Milton, not far down from Suncorp Stadium. In a lot of residential streets in the area there are signs up stating that ‘resident permits expected’. From speaking with people at work, I understand those signs have to do with encouraging people to take public transport (included in the ticket price for Suncorp Stadium) to avoid thousands of cars descending into the local area when an event is on.

I assumed I must have been warned for parking in one of those areas, which I thought was completely unreasonable since in a street about 100m long there would have been 10 cars parked on each side of the road – some of which could have belonged to the owners of the associated houses.

To check what might be going on I turned to Google Street View and you won’t believe it, but right beside where I park my car there is a street sign which I presume says maximum parking duration two hours. In the Google Street View photo the top of the sign itself is obscured by branches/leaves of a nearby tree – maybe that is why I didn’t notice it or I could simply be blind.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to drive past the area and check if that sign is still there or what the official parking requirements are for Macintosh Street. Whatever the case, I’m grateful to the parking inspector that they gave me a warning instead of just penalising me given that I was parking, albeit incorrectly, in what is otherwise an empty street not annoying anyone.