While it may not seem like it to Main Street business customers, over the course of the year, Penticton’s major parking areas see only 45 per cent utilization, according to the city’s development director.
That number came as part of a report on the city’s general parking issues, which looked at everything from metered parking to the resident-only parking program to the possibility of a parkade.
A 45-per-cent utilization rate may seem small for those trying to park along Main Street in the 100 to 300 blocks, which is why it’s necessary to find a better solution to downtown parking, according to Penticton’s CAO Peter Weeber.
“That is incredible to me that we have the available parking. We just need to design a system that supports people,” Weeber said during Tuesday afternoon’s council meeting.
Of particular issue city staff noted was employees of the Canada Revenue Agency downtown who take turns shuffling cars around every two hours to avoid ticketing in the two-hour parking spaces downtown.
“I think with the money that Canada Revenue’s spending on having their employees running in and out of the building, moving their cars around, they should probably invest in parking,” Weeber said.
Among the solutions presented for freeing up parking downtown was a parkade, but development services director Anthony Haddad told council that with only 45-per-cent utilization that’s not a viable option.
“When you get to that 85-per-cent, 80-per-cent utilization rate over the entire year, that’s when you start to look at providing those parkades,” Haddad said.
“There are solutions out there. Utilization rate certainly has some issues in terms of viability of a parkade structure, for example. Are people willing to pay $120 a month to park in a parkade?”
Currently, downtown parking lots tend to cost anywhere between $36.75 per month and $55 per month for a parking pass, according to Haddad’s report.
Part of the issue, Haddad said, was that often a remedy to one parking issue can cause issues to crop up elsewhere downtown.
“Parking’s not going to make everyone happy. Parking solutions aren’t going to make everything perfect for everyone,” Haddad said. “How do we make it as reasonable as possible? How do we improve customer service?”
On that note, the other side of the staff report on Tuesday was from Penticton’s public engagement consultant JoAnne Kleb, who outlined two things that she thinks the city needs to do from here.
“The first is there’s kind of a broad, city-wide need to get feedback,” Kleb told council.
“You don’t have to live in downtown to have a stake in parking downtown, you don’t have to live on the lakeshore to have a stake in parking on the lakeshore.”
On top of that, Kleb is proposing more directed engagement for resident-only parking issues.
“We’re proposing a targeted feedback form that we would hope to deliver door-to-door and car-to-car and business-to-business in order to get the highest possible participation we can,” she said.
Kleb has a few things planned moving forward on parking. That includes putting the issue up to the public on the city’s engagement website starting June 12.
On June 14, she says she’s looking to have an outreach day, including walking along the lakeshore, in parks and around downtown to talk to people about their thoughts on parking issues.
Starting June 14, also, Kleb says she’s planning to start putting out a parking survey and feedback forms, available until June 30.
Finally, Kleb says she will be available for a public feedback event at the library on June 22 from 5-8 p.m., along with attending the market on June 24.