Recently a trucking company created a parking pad for their large and noisy dump trucks. Its on a property in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) and they need to drive through our residential neighbourhood to get there. I don't want our street to be a truck route.
The company uses the land only to park their trucks and both the municipality and the ALR say this is definitely breaking the law by setting up shop there. However we seem to have no recourse with these trucks going up and down our road full of young children and seniors.
The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure controls the use of our roads, not our local regional district. I want to know if it is legal to drive commercial vehicles repeatedly on a residential road? We live in the Sunshine Coast Regional District, near Gibsons.
General Use of Roads
In general, our roads are for the use of all properly licensed vehicles. Restrictions may include height limits due to low clearance or weight limits in spring or because of the inability of structures to support heavy vehicles.
Truck Route Restrictions
Specific road use restrictions are enacted in the bylaws of municipalities or regional districts. A truck route is often created to control where commercial vehicles operate inside their boundaries. The obvious exemption is when that commercial vehicle is making a delivery to a location that is not on a truck route.
It appears that the Sunshine Coast Regional District does not have a bylaw for this.
Zoning Restrictions
Another option for controlling heavy commercial vehicles is to prevent them from parking or being stored on land through the use of zoning bylaws.
Being a home based business may be a permitted use of the land.
The provincial zoning restriction is the ALR designation, but it permits a home based business.
The regional district's zoning bylaw 722 says:
5.4.1 Where a home-based business is a permitted use, it shall be subject to the following conditions:
f) It must not generate traffic that exceeds the level prevailing in the neighbourhood or create a demand for off-street parking that cannot be contained within the parcel containing the home-based business;
k) Employees of a home based business are restricted to residents of the parcel where the home based business operates plus not more than two other persons.
This does not forbid travel to and from the property. Leaving at the beginning of the day and returning at the end with the odd visit during the day would be similar to traffic from neighbourhood residences.
Enforcement
Police and Bylaw Enforcement are responsible to deal with your complaints about non-conforming commercial vehicle traffic.
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So, dear fellow reader, I see by your grievance there seems to be several points of contradiction.
The main being you claim your inquires to the district office and "someone" saying this illegal. However you also state law enforcement has no authority to act.
Then there is the buttering up of your letter to include young children and elderly.
These two issues speak to a possibility of your trying to manipulate the reader to believe someone whom you personally don't approve of doing something you dislike, and therefore want the community to support you without any further and clear information.
Good try, have a nice day.
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Contradictions