You Say On Street Parking Will Keep You From Heading Downtown
Tuesday, July 16, 2013 @ 3:58 AM
Prince George, B.C.- The Downtown Business Improvement Association of Prince George, continues to collect names on a petition calling on the City to abandon its plans to return to charge for on street parking in the downtown core.
“We have about 1400 names now, and hope to close it off Wednesday or Thursday of this week” says Rod Holmes, President of the DBIA. “ Hopefully we will be able to establish some communication with City Hall.”
Council has been advised the contract for the provision of a new on street parking system is to be awarded “soon”.
The City had previously indicated it would like to see the equipment installed in late summer, or early fall, with the system fully operational before the snow flies.
Council has approved an hourly rate of $1.00 for the new system.
The Downtown Business Improvement Association has argued it could provide the same service at a much lower cost than the more than $1 million dollars the City will spend on the new equipment and the DBIA’s system would make money for the City.
But the DBIA says up until now, the City has not been willing to listen to its proposal. President Rob Holmes says they have heard from some Councillors who would like to have a one on one meeting to discuss the issue and learn about the DBIA’s proposal.
While there has been plenty of criticism that the DBIA’s proposal is too little too late, Holmes says they have never given up hope “ I don’t know it it’s too little too late, until we actually see the contract being awarded and the stuff being installed, I think there is an opportunity to communicate.”
The unscientific poll conducted by 250 News, asked if the return of on street parking in the downtown core would deter you from doing business in the downtown? The results show 95.2% (6713) said yes it would, while 4.8% (338) said no it would not.
Holmes says the DBIA is concerned about what the return of pay parking will do to business downtown. When the parking meters were removed, at least one business reported a 17% increase in business, the DBIA’s Holmes says if the meters come back there is a concern business will drop by the same amount.
Comments
I haven’t been downtown in years don’t have any plans on doing so in the future neither. There is absolutely nothing downtown for me at all everything I need is at the box stores.
City is infamous anyway at making boneheaded decisions then realize afterwards that they made a mistake I think this is going to be one of those mistakes but the city being the city will not figure it out as per usual till way to late.
Won’t stop me and if I get a ticket I won’t pay it! What will the city do if everyone refuses to pay their parking tickets!
As I said before this is a ploy by the City to force people to use off street parking, and their parkades.
Who was complaining about parking downtown?? Certainly not the business people, nor the people who work down there, or for that matter the people who shop down there.
So we can safely assume that this initiative is totally driven by the City to try and generate more revenue.
The people who work downtown are those who probably use the restaurants and stores the most.
Seems to me the old system worked so why wouldn’t they just leave it alone???
Just like when one of my family members had a heart attack. My time ran out at the hospital and as long as I am alive I will not pay that ticket. If down town PG wants my business, I will no be paying money to park my car.
I really couldn’t care less about parking meters, I’m not going to be downtown for more than a couple hours at a time. 2$ O my god?!?!? I’m will try to however keep the hope that they plan on using the extra money wisely. Fingers crossed!
I just don’t understand why the question was not asked; they are going to spend over a million to install these new meters and license recognition software/hardware plus 160-300,000 a year for maintenance of the new system. They anticipate 380,000 winfall from doing this. How often does this equipment need replacing, what is its lifespan? What is the lifespan cost of this system versus revenue?
Exactly how long will it take to pay off the system and when will they see a return to the plus side of the ledger? 10 to 15 years maybe if the numbers are actually correct?
For people who don’t pay their parking tickets, the City should institute ‘the boot’.
As for pay parking, it doesn’t really matter to me since I rarely go downtown. If I have to go downtown, I’ll pay. If you can afford to drive and insure a car, $1 is not too much to ask.
“Posted by: Palopu on July 16 2013 7:07 AM
As I said before this is a ploy by the City to force people to use off street parking, and their parkades.”
Does the city get a portion of the revenue for impark or is there a set rate per month and who gets the actual cash paid into the meters and fines?
The city can’t use a collection agency for on-street parking according to them but impark can on a city lot?
IMPARK will be absolutely horrible to deal with if you get a ticket and dont pay it. My truck was wrongfully ticketed at the Victoria Medical Building a few years ago and Impark was in charge of collecting. They are ridiculous to deal with. Long waits on hold listening to crappy music to dispute a ticket. It becomes obvious that if they keep you waiting for an hour on hold, you’ll say that your time is worth more than that and you just shut up, pay the bill and take it up the “you know what”.
Pay parking doesn’t bother me providing there are meters at the parking spot. The idea of having a ticket center that you would have to go to to pay for your parking is a deterrent. When the City had the meters in place I could go to the banks and would always find a place to park. Now, there is very limited parking.
If it is the employees of businesses that are using up the on street parking, that’s pathetic. If there are no customers/clients, there are no jobs for the employees. As an employer, I would demand that my employees park away from my business, not right in front of the door! Common sense? I think so.
The parkades have very little space. They are typically rented out to long term users.
VMT: “If it is the employees of businesses that are using up the on street parking, that’s pathetic. If there are no customers/clients, there are no jobs for the employees. As an employer, I would demand that my employees park away from my business, not right in front of the door! Common sense? I think so. “
I remember listening to Ben’s radio show a while back and a guy called in who claimed to be a business owner and sheepishly admitted to parking right in front of his store. Clueless.
As for the employees, there is a huge contingent of office and government workers taking up parking spaces downtown. All they would do is move their cars around on their smoke breaks. This is why free parking in downtown PG doesn’t work.
If there was ever something to privatize, parking meters is it!!
Impark may not touch it with a 10ft pole unless the City subsidizes their operation … turns over all off street, on the ground parking as well.
“This is why free parking in downtown PG doesn’t work.”
And this is why it should work once 80% of the workers downtown are gone …. after 5pm … Saturdays, Sundays, holidays all day long. I think many/most small towns work that way if they have meters in the first place.
As I said, provide free parking for employees on parking lots. That is the other thing some smaller cities do.
Someone in the City is not a business person …. oops … I guess everyone at the City is not a business person …. and they think they can make a fortune.
One of the retailers who used to have a business on 4th, complained about a service company on the street who took up at least 3 spaces in front of the store with their employee’s cars. When asked to park somewhere else, they would not budge. And, of course, the worst thing is that the DBIA has not been able to deal with the problem. It is in their interest, so they are incapable of doing their job.
Paid parking wont keep me from downtown. There are numerous other things downtown that will keep me from going there. One is the fear of getting bothered at just about every corner.
I love to WALK downtown. Paid parking won’t make much difference to me. I would love to see more bus servce and bike parking instead, so it woudl be great to see revenues from parking funnelled into those improvements (like they do at UNBC). I think DBIA needs to be more proactive instead of reactive. They say they have alternative proposals that are more cost effective…what are they? I can count on one hand the number of bike racks business owners have installed downtown.
I didn’t know we still had a downtown.. I just thought we had about 4 square blocks for,the undesirables to live..place for drug dealers to sell, hookers to work. Homeless to live etc.. Not my definition of a downtown.
I think Impark is in the pocket of a lot of bureaucrats and makes obscene profits through the privatization of parking lots. Its one thing to run the parking for a private business, but schools and hospitals is down right obscene IMO. I have no doubt they will gouge anyone that dares go downtown.
Whether you are interested in the downtown or not, you have to agree that this is another boondoggle.
This is going to cost the City a lot of money–more money than they are projecting to bring in.
That means that every taxpayer out there–yes even those that don’t go downtown are going to pay through the nose for this.
I say put the $1 million towards the roads.
If you feel the same way, then call the mayor and City Councillors.
“The unscientific poll conducted by 250 News, asked if the return of on street parking in the downtown core would deter you from doing business in the downtown? The results show 95.2% (6713) said yes it would, while 4.8% (338) said no it would not”
I’d be curious to find out if this means that people in PG wouldn’t do business in ANY downtown that had paid parking, or if it’s just PG’s downtown.
If it’s the former, then PG must have the most seclusive population in the nation.
If it’s the latter, then I’d suggest there obviously isn’t enough going on downtown to attract people, despite the costs. The next logical step would be to figure out why that is. Hint, a new police station WON’T help . . .
I don’t think I want to pay a dollar an hour to worry about my car being broken into by some meth addict. So it would deter me from going down town (more so than I already am).
Now, if the City were to put that revenue into more funding for Policing down town, I’d support that. A specific fund just for down town policing. Walking or bike patrols. I think we might actually get people to be happy to pay for parking.
It’s a good thought, PGCoffeeAddict, but there isn’t going to be any net revenue from the downtown parking. It costs more than it will bring it.
Didn’t we pay to have all of the meters removed downtown quite a few years back? More charges for parking in the “dead zone” is not the answer, especially at new costs … to summon vampires like Impark.
The 338 are people who have retail stores in the downtown. Yikes!
Posted by: JohnnyBelt on July 16 2013 8:06 AM
For people who don’t pay their parking tickets, the City should institute ‘the boot’.
Institute to boot? Sure way to make absolutely sure the downtown becomes a last resort. What an idiotic suggestion.
Comments for this article are closed.