Doug Boulton holds his parking ticket and a receipt that shows he paid the daily parking fee. He got the ticket for pulling his car through into a stall at the Somerset-Bridlewood park-and-ride lot. (Terri Trembath/CBC)

Some Calgary drivers are fuming over tickets they received for parking their vehicles by reversing into, or pulling through, into stalls in park-and-ride lots.

Doug Boulton said he paid the $3 parking fee on Tuesday as he does daily in the lot connected to the Somerset-Bridlewood C-Train station. When he returned later that day, he saw a ticket on his windshield and a note that he didn't park "facing in."

"I'm shocked by this because I've paid every day. [I'm] pretty compliant with these types of things," he told CBC News on Wednesday. "So I look at the ticket, and it explains to me it's an unauthorized park because I have not faced the proper direction.

"It's a pull-through stall. I parked in a very safe and common manner. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary."

Laurie Leddy said a whole row of vehicles in the lot got tickets on Tuesday. "I will now be driving downtown; this is too much cost and frustration," she wrote in an email.

Licence plates need to be visible

The park-and-ride lots fall under the city's new ParkPlus system, which uses cameras, mounted on a car, to monitor licence plates of parked vehicles. Officers do not walk around to check the plates.

"If you back into a stall, that licence plate can't be seen by the mobile photo-enforcement unit and, indeed, we're not able to actually seek the licence plate or affect an outcome," said Dale Fraser, general manager of the Calgary Parking Authority.

Signs erected at each entryway to park-and-ride lots state "Park Facing In — ONLY," according to the Calgary Parking Authority.

Signs like this are posted at every park-and-ride lot in Calgary, according to the Calgary Parking Authority. (Monty Kruger/CBC)

The authority has not been enforcing the "facing-in" rule until this week, he added. Flyers reminding drivers to park facing in were handed out in September as warnings.

"We were taking some time to allow Calgarians to change their parking behaviour," said Fraser.

But Boulton said he did not see any signage indicating which direction vehicles must face.

"I think it's completely arrogant of the city to issue a ticket, and … [proper] signage wasn't there that I noticed. [I'm] just completely offended by the whole situation," he said.

"They use a camera system to scan license plates. … It may work well on downtown streets but, clearly, it's not working so well in large parking lots, and their problem is now my problem!"

The ticket, which Boulton said he saw on at least three dozen windshields, carries a $40 fine that has to be paid within 10 days. After that, the charge increases to $50.