Parking Strategy Working Says City Hall
Prince George, B.C.- It’s been three months since the new downtown parking plan came into effect and City Hall says it is paying off, but there is a crunch coming for monthly parking stall renters.The City will be closing the parkade at 5th and Dominion from March 1st until early September . 205 tenants will have to be relocated to other monthly parking stalls for the duration of the parkade upgrades. The relocation of those tenants could reduce the availability of off street stalls by about 6%. That is the first of two projects the City has planned for this year. The second will see the parking lot behind to the Wood Innovation and Design Centre closed to make room for construction of the new research lab and park. The City is confident there are enough parking stalls in nearby parkades and off street lots to offset the loss of those stalls.
The new pay stations and three hour maximum limit for on street parking in the downtown zone is paying off.
According to Bylaw Services Manager Fred Crittenden, the vacancy rate at the off street lots for hourly and daily stalls was 57% before the new parking rules came into effect. That vacancy rate has now dropped to 24%.
There are fewer monthly parking stalls available as well, dropping from 379 in October, the month before the new parking rules came into effect, to 310 in January.
Revenue is up, with $22,240.00 paid into the hourly/daily pay stations in January, nearly triple the amount collected in October when just over $8.5 thousand had been paid. Part of the January increase can be attributed to an increase in the hourly and daily rate which took effect January 1st. Prior to that increase, the average transaction at the pay station was around $3.50. In January, that average transaction climbed to $4.88.
Comments
Is that net revenue or gross? What is it costing to enforce and maintain the parking system? 10, 15 thousand a month?
How much money did they receive from fines in January? Would like to see the whole picture on the revenue side!
This is a pure and simple money making scam.
YOu don’t have to be downtown for three hours to get a ticket. You only have to have your plate scanned three times in a day. so in fact you could be parked for less than a hour total and still get a fine. AS for the city saying come in if you think the fine is unwarranted and they will discuss it with you…another scam, you get told to PROVE you weren’t there for three hours.. pretty hard to do and they know it.
Not they are shutting down one of the parkades for 7 months, for ” upgrades” or is it to force people onto the streets to be fines?
Fred Crittenden, everything you say is far as I am concerned it you justifying your job.
People need to refuse to go downtown, it won’t take long and they will revisit this scam.
So you are saying they have nothing in their system that allows for that scenario. If I go downtown at 10 am and then go back home and come back into town at 2 pm and happen to get scanned both times the system is going to think I was downtown for 4 hours? If that is the case then they paid alot of money for a system that is severely flawed and it will take extraordinary circumstances for me to go downtown more than once in any given day.
that is right, you get caught by the camera 3 times in a day and you get ticketed whether you are down town 3 minutes or three hours.
You want to contest it and they say prove you weren’t downtown 3 hours.
You are correct bcracer! A person has to have 2 vehicles if they want to visit downtown more than once a day!
Ah, great idea!! I never thought of that :)
Unfortunately the revenue is coming from the people that work downtown. I pay $1000 a year for parking just because my employer has chosen to have our office downtown. Oh, except for the City workers because they have free parking in their own lot. How fair is that? The highest paid employees in this City plus the perks of free parking. Nice.
Sorry, but this attitude of entitlement doesn’t wash with me. ‘The City workers have free parking so I should have it too! Who cares about the shoppers!’. Um, no.
They expanded the area to include the hospital, but why wasn’t it also expanded by a block to include the City Hall area as well?
This whole downtown parking system is a big fiasco. The people who work downtown are also customers. They are forced to pay for parking downtown while other customers get three hours free parking.
If the people who work downtown quit shopping there, and started to bring their lunch to work, a number of restaurants would go broke.
To add insult to injury the people who work downtown are forced to find off street parking or parkade parking wherever they can, which I suggest means that some end up walking some distance from their parking to their work place,.
So if you work downtown and support downtown business, you are forced to pay for parking, but if you are just a regular shopper you get free parking. Hmmmm.
Seems to me this is nothing more than a revenue grab for the City. No different than charging for parking at the hospital, CNC,. University, Airport, etc: Easy way to generate revenue, while you are sitting on your butt contemplating your navel.
The problem historically was that the workers were taking all the spots during the day so no one else can park down there. There are plenty of parkades and lots for workers, most underutilized, They’re just too lazy or too cheap to use them. Like I said above, it crosses into an attitude of entitlement and looking out for #1 and to heck with anyone else.
I work downtown and I’m fine with paying for parking and have done so for many years. However, the rates have almost doubled in the last few years and I don’t know why the City Hall parking lot isn’t considered downtown as well?
I totally agree that since the on-street parking is free that we need to keep the worker’s off the streets and get them into the parking lots. That issue definitely needed to be addressed because all the workers were taking up all of the on-street parking. I also believe that the best way to do that is to make the off-street lots affordable for these workers.
The cost to clean and maintain the lots has skyrocketed, and so too has the cost to park there. The City is under no obligation to make the lots ‘affordable’ as any shortfall would have to be made somewhere else.
It sounds harsh, but nobody owes you a cheap or free place to park your car. If the cost is too high, you can make the choice to use transit or work for someone who subsidizes parking.
The City is not the client. It is the provider.
The assessment needs to have the client involved. There are two or more: the people parking, whether workers or customers of the businesses; the employers; the businesses needing short term parking (a matter of 10 minutes to an hour or two) make it convenient for their customers.
Until we have that information, and the information of the past year which goes over winter months with snow which creates a different parking picture in the downtown when parking gets tougher and walking gets tougher.
The City needs someone on staff who can do proper and objective studies.
As Trump would say: FAKE NEWS …. ;-=)
Well the new parking system is working great. It is keeping me from going downtown so there is room for other people to park. When will cities all over Canada figure out that the issue with the demise of downtowns across the country are based on a few things. Developers don’t care, city planners work around building in the downtown, parking is always goofy downtown and nobody is doing anything to fix it. It’s about comparisons. If I can go to Mr Mikes and grab a burger and park for free and not get accosted by a hobo and not have to drive around like an idiot for an hour looking for a place to park then I should expect the same from an establishment downtown. If they can’t match up to the experience, then they are just plain out of luck. Plug in anything in place of Mr. Mikes. Clothes, food, booze, candy, insurance, lawyers, dentists, doctors etc. Same game, same issues.
I agree, I don’t go downtown either.
These stats are just further proof that the whole parking issue was about increasing revenue for the city. If it wasn’t, they’d have stats regarding increased traffic to store or restaurants, or increased sales, etc.
Nope, don’t have those stats because we don’t care, its all about city revenue.
Instead of dealing with the initial issue which was people working downtown parking all day and not leaving spots for shoppers, and of course not being able to solve the problem city just come up with a scheme that give a great money intake for them for doing nothing.
They still haven’t solved that problem they just off loaded it onto every motorist’s shoulders and city pats themselves on the back claiming they did a good job while probably waiting for a pay raise…
Does anyone really believe city hall would come out and say their parking strategy is not work in. Highly likely.
Forty thousand dollars spent on welcome signs; but if you stay too long we’ll fine you. Nothing more than a downtown worker’s tax, a burden to the working poor.
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