By François Biber

City planners want answers from parking study

Oct 25, 2014 | 9:44 AM

The City of Saskatoon hopes a year-long parking study will help them plan for the future of a rapidly growing city and dispel the notion that there’s no parking downtown.

On Monday, the city’s administration will recommend city council enter into a year-long $179,000 contract to BA Consulting to conduct a long-term parking study and develop a strategy on how to increase availability of parking in the city centre.

“This is a first for Saskatoon,” Alan Wallace, general manager of planning and development said, adding the city’s practice in the past has focused on short-term gains to add parking.

While the consultant will recommend how to increase the number of spots downtown, Wallace said he expects the strategy to reach much further.

“This is also a strategy to look at other types of parking; small car, motorcycle, bike parking, electric charging stations, new partnerships for parkades and new incentive programs,” he said.

Raiders win 5-3

Defensive scoring leads Raiders over Wheat Kings

6h ago

GST Holiday

Federal government's two-month GST holiday begins

22h ago

Imminent need

Council set to discuss possible location for homeless shelter on 15th Street

Dec 14, 2024

Earlier in 2014, Wallace asked city council for a five-year tax reduction for construction companies to encourage them to build multi-level parkades downtown. Wallace said 26 per cent of the surface area downtown is dedicated to surface parking lots.

After speaking with companies, Wallace said running a parkade as a business in Saskatoon isn’t affordable.

“We’d have to see parking rates two or three times what it is today to make that venture work,” he said, adding the city has seen a couple of proposals for developments for office buildings downtown. Wallace hopes the developers include some sort of public-parking component as well.

Executive Director with the Downtown Partnership, Brent Penner said he hopes the parking strategy offers answers about today’s downtown parking. He said he believes peoples’ belief that there isn’t a lot of parking downtown is what’s keeping traffic away from the core.

“There are a lot of perceptions out there that it’s difficult to park downtown so we’re hopeful they can confirm that,” Penner said. “Perceptions become reality and we think downtown has access and there are places to park.”

Preliminary consultations between the city and the Partnership show there are changes the city could move forward on sooner than later, like charging different rates for parking depending on the area; what Wallace calls stratified parking.

“Where there’s high demand you increase the rate and where there’s low demand you decrease the rate to encourage people to park a bit further and walk an extra block,” he said.

Penner said hotels and festival organizers are calling for a public parking parkade for events at TCU Place or any of the riverbank festivals, but he said that requires a lot of up-front costs with a slow return on investment. 

“We’re hopeful the study speaks to these issues,” Penner said.

The parking study encompasses downtown, Broadway and Riversdale. The city expects a final report late in 2015.

news@panow.com

On Twitter : @princealbertnow