ROB MURRAY: I’m speaking with Town of Banff Director of Engineering Adrian Field. The Town of Banff has released the Revised Draft Parking Plan – Phase 2 this week. Let’s go back to the beginning. What’s the motivation for going down the road of a new parking management strategy in the first place?

ADRIAN FIELD: Parking has been an issue in Banff probably since Banff had motorcars. We heard that 60% of people have issues trying to find parking spots. This summer we saw a visitation rebound to around 75% of what it was in 2019, and still the downtown parking lots were full and the parkade was full.

RM: The parking situation in Banff has certainly changed over the last couple of years. You have that big new train station parking lot now, don’t you?

AF: We do. The difficulty we have is in filling it. When there’s free downtown parking a lot of folks choose to drive downtown to see if they can find a free spot. We have worked pretty hard on trying to advertise the intercept parking lot, have flaggers and signage on the street, social media, all kinds of stuff, and still the downtown spaces are full and we have people circling for parking. At the same time the intercept parking lot is half full or even less than that. Folks are just not incentivized to park there and walk the five minutes or so.

RM: We’re into phase two, and I think a couple of the big changes from phase one – there’s the proposal to have 3 hour resident free parking downtown where the visitors would have to pay, and then some changes to the resident parking permit system that was originally proposed. What was that all based off of?

AF: We’re trying to respond to what we hear on a regular basis, which is parking is difficult and I wish these visitors didn’t park on the street outside my house, so designing a system that helps deal with those two issues is something that we’re really trying hard to engage community on. We heard some really valuable feedback through phase one. 85% of respondents said that visitors and out of town folks should help pay to maintain the road surface and things that have to do with parking. Those costs are about $285,000 per year which are currently paid by all Town of Banff taxpayers. Around 10% of downtown parkers are residents so we figure we’ll still achieve 90% of what we want to achieve if we charge for effectively visitors and out of town folks only. Residents would be eligible to register their license plates, then that registration would enable residents to park downtown for one three-hour period. That three hour period could be in multiple places downtown if they would like. Then all of the visitors could choose to park in the free spaces along Bow Avenue, or in the parkade, or the intercept parking lot, or they could choose to park downtown and choose to pay for that. The hope is that we’ll displace some of the downtown workers from parking for longer periods of time downtown and displace those folks to less well used spaces.

RM: Is that where that magic three hours number comes from? It’s more of an errand or appointment length of time, rather than a park and work for eight hours length of time?

AF: In the first draft it was free before 11:00, then everyone gets to pay. We got feedback – what if my physio appointment is at 12:00?  You travelling to your physio appointment is not the target market that we’re after. What we’re really trying to do is to displace longer-term parkers or downtown workers into the parkade or onto Bow Avenue, and frankly trying to generate a source of revenue that can help offset the costs of maintaining the roads, and can provide a free service to residents. We’re really trying to listen to the needs of residents through this revised parking proposal.

RM: Is there still an opportunity for feedback on the second phase?

AF: Yeah, we’re really trying to promote quite heavily that folks can go on to the Banff Viewpoints website and take part in the survey. For us it’s a really good way to get that feedback because we get the comments and we get whether we’re closer to the right answer this time. I’m not sure if there is a completely right answer that’s right for everybody. With COVID, I’m afraid they won’t be any in-person sessions so we’re really hoping that folks will take part in the survey. We’ll take this to council during the budget process this year.

RM: When does the survey close?

AF: November 15th.

 

Filed under: Banff, Banff Parking