Commercial vehicles are no longer allowed to park overnight on Aurora city streets after the City Council expanded a parking ordinance once just for residential areas.
The ordinance change, which police say will help with the excessive number of commercial vehicles being parked on city roads, was approved by the Aurora City Council at its meeting Tuesday.
In addition to banning the overnight parking of commercial vehicles on city streets, the expanded ordinance also restricts on-street commercial vehicle parking during the day to two hours unless a vehicle is actively making a delivery or providing a service.
Commercial vehicles that are obstructing traffic or causing a hazard, even if they are actively making a delivery or providing a service, would be in violation of the ordinance, though.
Police are now able to immediately tow commercial vehicles and trailers found in violation of the ordinance. Officer Grant Weil, who is part of the Aurora Police Department’s community-oriented policing unit, has previously said that this change will have a “significant positive impact on the responsiveness and ability for the Aurora Police Department to address frequent complaints of commercial vehicles parking on city streets.”
The ordinance change will allow the Aurora Police Department to enforce commercial parking rules consistently throughout the city, Weil has said, instead of having to identify every problem area and go through the lengthy process of getting signs approved and installed, as the police department has done in the past to mixed success.
Specifically, the newly-revised ordinance says commercial vehicles over 8,000 pounds, including truck tractors with or without a trailer, will not be allowed to park on public streets between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.
Between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., these vehicles could not be parked on city streets for more than two hours — and, at any time, these vehicles would not be allowed to obstruct other traffic or cause a hazard, according to the newly-revised ordinance.
The ordinance also applies to all types of trailers, whether or not they are attached to a vehicle.
The proposed ordinance does not have any impact on non-commercial parking anywhere, except that it may create more parking for residents, according to Weil. Plus, it may beautify all of the city’s districts and reduce commercial vehicle noise, he has said.
Many of the commercial vehicles parked overnight on city streets belong to companies outside of Aurora that do not have business with any nearby properties, Weil previously told an Aurora City Council committee. He said he personally spoke to some of the vehicles’ drivers who said they parked on Aurora streets before driving their personal vehicles home because they knew the city didn’t do anything to enforce commercial parking in non-residential areas.
The revised ordinance was brought forward by the Aurora Police Department because of several problem areas in the city, including the south section of Duke Parkway, Gabrielle Lane and Longmeadow Drive. In some of these areas, drivers were leaving behind excessive trash including human waste, completing oil changes that were then discarded into the street and causing excessive noise from idling trucks, according to Weil.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
