Victoria is about to launch a major parking review — looking at everything from on street parking rates and payment options to parkade use.
“Parking is probably the one service we receive the most amount of opinions and emails on,” Mayor Dean Fortin said.
“Council has made it one of our priorities to look at our parking services — how we can make it more efficient, make it more customer friendly, optimize all of the opportunities within the downtown.”
With nearly 2,000 on-street metered parking stalls, five parkades and four parking lots, parking is big business for the city.
Last year, parking generated more than $15.6 million in revenue — about eight per cent of the city’s operating budget. Of that, about $8.05 million is used to fund other city services.
But there are problems.
Net parking revenue in 2012 was down $300,000 from projections. Use of parkades is down substantially, which city staff say could be attributable to such factors as rates considered too high, partial closures for renovations or the general economic downturn.
Coun. Shellie Gudgeon, a downtown restaurateur, has high hopes for the review. She said there are many frustrations with parking downtown.
“They [the frustrations] are tremendous: how quickly a ticket is issued, the lack of hospitality. ... Enforcement is a must, I absolutely agree, but we don’t have to enforce quite so harshly,” Gudgeon said. “That’s just one component of it.”
People should be encouraged to use parkades in a way “that makes sense to the people,” she said.
The underlying purpose of city parking services, Fortin said, “is to make sure we have an active and vibrant downtown commercial core.”
Gudgeon said free Sunday parking is “crippling” businesses in the downtown, because employees use all the street parking. She said the city should look at extending metered parking into the evening and on Sundays.
“We’re trying to encourage a vibrant downtown that extends past 5 o’clock. … I know from first-hand [experience] in the restaurant business, from people that work in the industry, that people start their shift at 5 o’clock. They park their car at 5 o’clock and that meter is not used for anybody [else].”
Issues to be explored as outlined in the project charter include:
• Parking space availability, including hours of operation, variable rates and time limits.
• Reduction in parkade use, including rate structures and other incentives to increase use of parkades and thereby increase availability of street parking.
• Improved awareness and public information, including better signage and opportunities to improve payment options (for both fines and parking) through new technology such as smart phones.
• Improved Internet operations, including new revenue sources such as advertising or inter-municipal parking agreements.
• Partial automation of parkades during slow periods.
• Parking enforcement and violation collection, which would include improving “the quality of violations being issued” and investigating new methods for collection of outstanding violations.
• Parkade security.
• City reliance on parking revenue.
If the project charter is approved by council on Thursday, it is hoped a final report can be presented to council in October. The review is to be done in-house.
