Everybody does it, but does everybody know that it’s illegal? Let me give you an example.

You either commute to Brantford from your respective home town, or live in town and drive to class. You arrive for class at 8:30 AM and park your car in a two hour spot. After your lecture, you head back out to your car and move it before your next lecture, and park in a different two hour spot.

Well, I would watch where you park your car that second time because it could land you a $30 ticket.

This technique, a beloved one for many Brantford student drivers, has a technical term. Re-parking. Or bylaw number 182-2002 (bb), basically states that after parking in a timed parking space anywhere downtown, you are prohibited from parking anywhere else in the downtown core for five hours.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Jonathon Monks, a fourth year Laurier Student who recently received a ticket for re-parking. “I had no idea this bylaw was for real…what’s the reason for it?”

The bylaw was put in place by council shortly after the last parking meters were removed from Brantford streets in 1999. Once the meters were removed, the city found that re-parking was becoming a problem.

“The two hours was being abused,” says Michael Bradley Director of Fleet Services and Operations for the city of Brantford, “every car had two hours to park but what we were finding was that cars were moving up a space, or around the block and they weren’t freeing up the spaces.”

Currently, Brantford has 480 parking spaces in the downtown core, which are either one, two, or three house spots. Along with these there are 1,170 parking spaces in three surface lots and one parking structure. To patrol these parking areas the city has one full time parking officers, and three contract bylaw officers.

For students looking for long term parking, Bradley suggests the parking garage off of Icomm drive. Students can pay either 60 cents an hour, up to a maximum of five dollars a day, or a flat rate of $45 for the month.

Now, $45 may seem like a lot, but you may save in the long run if you get yourself a ticket re-parking, a ticket more students seem to be seeing tagged to their windshields now more than ever.