Montreal tourists Lina Tete (right) and Tori Tete pay for parking during their visit to Chinatown.
Drivers in Chinatown can breathe a sigh of relief.
Residents and visitors will no longer have to worry about the future of free parking on Saturdays after city council voted to uphold the no-charge, on-street option following an in-depth study conducted in the area.
The Chinatown Local Area Parking Study, recently submitted to the transportation committee for approval, included the issue of whether to continue what had originally been a temporary arrangement for free on-street parking along Somerset Street West between Bronson Avenue and Preston Street.
The free-parking regime was put in place in 2010 to encourage shoppers and diners to continue visiting the area during a lengthy period of road reconstruction.
The recommendation to renew free parking was passed unanimously.
Grace Xin, executive director of the Somerset Chinatown BIA, attended the meeting and says that she’s pleased Chinatown will continue to have free parking on a key day for businesses.
“It’s great. The area we’re talking about is the only area that had to pay for Saturday parking. The rest of the commercial districts in Centretown, they’re all free,”
she says.
Dalhousie Community Association Pnresident Michael Powell says consistency in parking across the city is the best option.
“In some parts of the city there’s paid on-street parking and other parts there isn’t. I think they need a more uniform approach to things. We shouldn’t pit one neighbourhood against the other,” says Powell.
The free Saturday parking costs the city about $50,000 per year from lost parking meter fees, says Mary Gracie, program manager for parking studies.
Though the study tackled areas other than car parking, community activist and former DCA president Eric Darwin says there should be more emphasis on alternative means of transportation to ease parking problems.
“We should be saying, ‘How do we make the pedestrian area more fun?’ Rather than trying to cope with the peak parking, how do we encourage traffic to come when it’s quieter?” says Darwin.
Powell points out that the vast majority of people moving through Chinatown do so on foot or with a bicycle and that the city should focus there first.
“Looking at other safer or more comfortable means of cycling through Chinatown would be helpful. Really slowing the street down as much as possible to get people out of their cars and on bikes is important,” he says.
Darwin adds that although parking can mean more customers for businesses, it isn’t the only way to attract shoppers.
“I see that merchants continually focus on parking, parking, parking. If you choose to locate in a neighbourhood without much private (business) parking, then you should be trying to focus and develop businesses that utilize walking and transit,” says Darwin.
“It does puzzle me sometimes, the way there is this myopic focus on street parking as opposed to something else.”