Parking | A city dweller complained more than 60 times about an unauthorized parking space – Now it finally started to happen

In the business district of Herttoniemi located on Sahaajakankatu, there is a parking space that belongs to the Atoy car repair shop operating along the street. Cars parked in the parking lot have been bothering both pedestrians and cyclists for several years.

In practice, cars block the street so that light traffic is forced to give way directly to the oncoming lane of the highway. In winter, parking also hinders the plowing of the street. Then, in addition to the cars, the place was blocked by the piles of snow accumulated around the parking lot.

The parking lot is in violation of the site plan, and the car parking has therefore been unauthorized.

For more than two years, the situation on Sahaajankatu has been actively featured on Helsinki Urban Environment’s X account on the former Twitter. In May 2021, a passer-by published a picture of the parking lot and tagged the Urban Environment X account in connection with it. The photo showed how a van parked in the parking lot partially blocked the sidewalk.

“Let’s put in a control request here,” comments Urban Environment under the picture.

Same the pedestrian has since continued reporting from the parking lot. To date, he has already published more than 60 pictures of the street in question, which seem to have remained the same.

The urban environment has repeatedly promised to pass on the information to the parking control. The numerous control requests clearly do not seem to have worked, because the flow of pictures from Sahaajankaku has continued unbroken.

However, on Thursday of this week, Urban Environment reported significant news from Sahaajankaku.

“Building control has now started the so-called the obligation process and will present to the environment and permit division the prohibition of parking until the changes are made”, Urban Environment announced in the message service X.

Building control is not willing to comment on the Sahaajankatu parking issue for HS.

HS reached out to several office holders working in construction supervision to comment on the matter, but none of them answered the phone or emailed interview requests.

“We are not giving interviews on the matter now,” writes the construction lawyer Kaisa Hongisto in his email message.

Hongisto has, however, added the decision to permit the operation as an attachment to his email. It appears that 12 parking spaces should be temporarily placed in the car repair shop Atoy’s parking lot.

Permits for parking spaces are applied for three years in such a way that they no longer cross the boundary of the lot and block the sidewalk. Parking spaces must be marked either with paintings or with signs indicating the location of the spaces so that parking partially on the sidewalk is prevented.

Urban environment based on Thursday’s announcement, building control is now trying to ensure that the changes described in the permit decision are made to the parking lot on Sahaajankatu.

Hongisto confirms this in his email to HS.

“The granted operation permit contains permit regulations, the compliance of which is the responsibility of the property owner. To this day, the building control has not come to the knowledge that the work required in the permit has been done,” he writes.

According to Hongisto, building control has been in contact with the property owner’s representative at the end of October that the works according to the permit will be carried out.

“Inspection measures have been initiated in the building control department. Building control requires and will monitor that the work is carried out in accordance with the permit.”

Helsinki Tomi Strömberg submitted a request for measures to Helsinki’s building control for the Atoy parking lot located on Sahaajakankatu in March 2022. He is a different person than X’s series commenter.

In it, he described the inconvenience that cars left in the parking lot cause to light traffic. HS has seen the action request in question.

Since then, Strömberg has been in contact with building control several times about the progress of the case.

“Cars narrow the width of the street in use. It should accommodate two-way bicycle and pedestrian traffic, but the space will run out if cars cover half of the street,” he says.

Strömberg according to him, the damage has been worst in the wintertime.

“It multiplies in the winter, because the enhanced winter care bike route from Itäkeskus to Kulosaari goes from that point. Winter maintenance cannot be done properly because of the cars on the street.”

There is no bike path on the other side of the street, so it is necessary for pedestrians and cyclists to stay on the light traffic lane on the side of the parking lot.

The property has also used the street area to store the snow removed from the parking lot, says Strömberg.

“The street has sometimes been completely blocked with snow and cars.”

This is evident from the photo that Strömberg took from the parking lot last winter.