Victoria’s parking rates, including the first-hour-free policy in parkades, are being reviewed as part of a larger look at downtown transportation issues, city councillors were told Thursday.
That review is being done in conjunction with downtown residents, the Downtown Victoria Business Association and the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps said work with the other agencies is underway and the city should focus on a setting a goal to encourage more people to use transit, cycle and walk.
“There’s a whole list of solutions that are being explored,” Helps said.
With the number of complaints about the lack of parking downtown on the rise, Coun. Geoff Young suggested city staff review parking rates and be given authority to adjust rates to ensure parking is always available, especially for short-term users.
Susanne Thompson, the city’s director of finance, said parking rates will be part of an annual update on parking to council next month. She said staff will take a holistic approach to transportation and won’t focus solely on parking.
“We’ll be careful to make sure that we are not inadvertently breaking something by making a short-term adjustment now that we might have to change later,” Thompson said.
Some people are attributing Victoria’s growing parking woes to a combination of new development filling up vacant lots and the removal of street parking to make way for new bike lanes.
Young said there will always be competing constraints on the availability of street parking — including loading zones, bus stops and bike lanes.
However, he said, it’s the city’s job to manage the existing parking stock, noting that it has been the city’s priority to provide short-term parking for people shopping for goods or services.
“They are the people whose ability to come downtown makes the downtown viable,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the reports I’m hearing are that there are times of day when people are being frustrated in their desire to come downtown for those short trips. … I think it is really incumbent on us to make sure that they can be accommodated.”
In 2014, in an effort to free up more street parking, the city began offering the first hour free in its parkades while adjusting street parking rates to make those closest to the parkades more expensive.
The program has been successful. City parkades are regularly full between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Coun. Charlayne Thornton-Joe, the council liaison to downtown, agreed parking has become “more problematic” in the past year, but said it is always the No. 1 issue for downtowns.
“Even the cities who have been successful [in dealing with it], they still say that parking is the No. 1 issue that people are always concerned about,” she said. “My concern is parking rates are only one piece of the puzzle.”
Coun. Ben Isitt said the council should look at financing options for new parkades in 2018.
“While I don’t support a general tax increase to fund parkades, I think we do have to look at financing options to build one or more parkades — either standalone or in conjunction with other mixed-use forms of development,” he said.
Helps said private-sector builders have told her that it is not financially viable to build new parkades.
“Right now, it’s about 14 bucks a day to park downtown,” she said. “To build and finance a new parkade, it would be about 28 bucks a day to park downtown.”
