I woke up this morning in the City of London, Ontario, to a parking ticket. Apparently, I had committed an infraction by parking between the hours of 3:00 am - 5:00 am.

Here’s what the sign looked like, directly in front of my car. There were no other signs nearby other than one at the end of the street telling me where the parking area stopped.

Perhaps I’m missing something, but based on the signage provided, there’s absolutely no way for me to know that parking is not permitted between the precise hours of 3:00 am and 5:00 am. And truthfully, this seems like an odd set of hours to want to enforce. 

If there were some feasible way for me to fight this ticket, I would. But since cities make this purposely difficult, I’m just going to pay it. Even though I feel like fighting it out of principle.

But this post isn’t for me to complain about a parking ticket.

When I got the ticket this morning, it reminded me of a “theory” that someone once told me at an Urban Land Institute conference a few years back in Washington D.C. I actually can’t remember who it was, but the idea was that you can tell how global a city is by the quality of its signage and

I woke up this morning in the City of London, Ontario, to a parking ticket. Apparently, I had committed an infraction by parking between the hours of 3:00 am - 5:00 am.

Here’s what the sign looked like, directly in front of my car. There were no other signs nearby other than one at the end of the street telling me where the parking area stopped.

Perhaps I’m missing something, but based on the signage provided, there’s absolutely no way for me to know that parking is not permitted between the precise hours of 3:00 am and 5:00 am. And truthfully, this seems like an odd set of hours to want to enforce. 

If there were some feasible way for me to fight this ticket, I would. But since cities make this purposely difficult, I’m just going to pay it. Even though I feel like fighting it out of principle.

But this post isn’t for me to complain about a parking ticket.

When I got the ticket this morning, it reminded me of a “theory” that someone once told me at an Urban Land Institute conference a few years back in Washington D.C. I actually can’t remember who it was, but the idea was that you can tell how global a city is by the quality of its signage and