Cambridge studying abuse of free core parking

CAMBRIDGE — Businesses in the city’s three downtowns can’t seem to agree on how to improve parking problems in core areas.

Abuse of free parking was cited as a big concern in a report by the core areas parking working group, so it suggested reducing free two-hour street parking to one hour. The idea to remedy the issue of reparking didn’t sit well with some business owners.

“We will put in place a system potentially threatening free parking or threatening decent parking that will cause us to lose our customer base,” Graham Braun, chair of the Downtown Cambridge Business Improvement Association, told Cambridge’s planning and development committee Tuesday.

“In the end we will have no issue of (parking) abuse because there will be no businesses open anymore.”

The core area parking working group was formed last year to address parking problems in the downtown areas of Hespeler, Galt and Preston, but the report found no consensus between the three downtown’s business improvement areas.

Right now the three core areas have free two-hour street parking, free two-hour parking in some paid lots and some free long-term parking lots a bit further from the core.

The working group’s report and city staff both concluded that a parking system with reduced free spaces will help with turnover and bring more people to the cores.

“It would be a parking system that is common practice,” Julianna Petrovich, a transportation engineer with the city, said citing other cities that do the same. “Turnover is good for business.”

A survey found that a large number of business owners want to keep some sort of free parking in the downtown cores. They say the reduction of free two-hour parking will discourage shoppers from coming downtown because most people need more than two hours to shop and perhaps stop somewhere to grab lunch, the report said.

But city staff pointed out that the survey, which only got responses from 22 per cent of businesses, also indicated a lack of awareness of parking options downtown.

More consultation on how to remedy congestion in the cores will be needed, Petrovich said.

Committee members asked staff to review the working group’s report and return to council with further recommendations.

The parking group’s suggestions:

Turn two-hour street parking into one-hour street parking;

Get rid of free two-hour parking in paid lots and implement a rate of $1 per hour from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and $0.50 per hour from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m. Monday to Friday;

Turn some free downtown lots into paid lots, such as Mill Street, Market Square, Dickson Street and Westminster Drive;

Install pay-by-plate meters and a mobile pay system at a cost of $50,000;

Initiate a parking study for the Hespeler core at a cost of $50,000 because of growth in the area.