Keeping up with parking demands
Consultant’s study suggests adding another storey to the city’s King Street parking garage
City council may need to add a fourth storey to the King Street parking garage, over the next couple of years, to keep up with growing demand for parking downtown.
The recommendation is included in a new study of downtown parking that will be reviewed by city councillors Monday night.
The Toronto-based consulting firm IBI Group was hired by the city to forecast parking needs downtown for the next decade.
The report says there are now 3,607 parking spots available for public use downtown, including on-street parking, municipal lots and private parking lots (ie: at stores).
For now that’s sufficient, the report states, but not for long: downtown Peterborough is likely to need 750 new parking spaces by 2027.
But since downtown land is pricey and scarce, the consultants and city staff say it’s less expensive to add spaces in public garages than to try to build new parking lots.
The King Street parkade is ideal, states the report, because of its proximity to Bethune St. and Charlotte St.
Bethune St. is expected to be converted into a linear park with outdoor cafes, and that’s going to mean the loss of on-street parking.
Meanwhile a new urban park is going to cover the Louis St. parking lot at Charlotte St.; there are more than 100 parking spots in that lot, and they will all be lost too.
Not that it’s cheap to add parking spaces in a public parking garage: the report states that the cost is about $40,000 per spot.
Adding 750 spots in parking garages would cost $30 million, the report states – and that’s if those spots were added in 2017. In a decade, with the rising cost of construction, it would likely cost $46 million.
Finding that money is going to be a challenge; the city has just $1.4 million in reserves meant for parking. That’s why the report suggests ways to collect revenue, including charging more for parking fees and fines.
On Monday, councillors will consider a fee hike for parking downtown: starting January 1, 2018, it could cost $1.25 to park for an hour instead of $1.
The fines for overtime parking (such as when a motorist parks at pay-and-display and overstays) or at expired meters could increase too, from $15 to $25. That is expected to generate about $145,000 for the city, in 2018.
There are other revenue-generating ideas, too. For example, the city charges developers a fee when they cannot squeeze enough parking for their tenants or customers onto their properties.
Because it forces motorists onto municipally owned parking spots, the city charges $6,000 per spot the developer fails to provide. The new report suggests increasing that fee to $8,000 or even $10,000.
It also suggests that any money the city collects from parking fees that isn’t necessary to maintain parking lots should go back into the reserves – not toward other city costs.
The report will be reviewed by city councillors at a meeting at City Hall on Monday night. Live video streaming and blogging from the meeting are available on The Examiner’s website. The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m.