OTTAWA -- With a record amount of snow in Ottawa this weekend, many were surprised and frustrated that the city did not impose an overnight parking ban.

The ban, usually put in place when 7 cm or more of snow is expected, means people can’t park their vehicles on city streets between 1 a.m. to 7 a.m. to allow crews to clear snow.

The city says based on when the heaviest snow was falling, crews wouldn’t have made it to residential neighborhoods until later Sunday morning when the ban would have already been lifted.

“We are looking at different ways to manage it so maybe changing the wording around a ‘winter weather parking ban’ instead of an overnight parking ban and really focusing it around the times that we will be out in the residential neighborhoods clearing snow,” said Laila Gibbons, the city’s director of roads and parking services.

Many residents said they wished a ban had been in place because they found their streets more narrow and hard to navigate with vehicles parked on the road.

Ottawa’s mayor says he’s received positive feedback about the city’s snow removal.

“I’ve received actually a fair number of positive comments that the sidewalks and roads got plowed it seems a lot quicker than in years gone by so we put extra resources into the budget because we recognize that removing snow and plowing streets is a basic community service and we had to do better than what we’d done in the last two years,” said Jim Watson.