REGINA — Changes to parking in downtown Regina are coming Wednesday.
Amendments to the city’s traffic by-law have adjusted several items, including:
Pay parking zones
Starting Wednesday, downtown Regina will now have two separate parking zones.
Drivers in Zone A will pay $2.50/hr plus a 25 cent charge from the PaybyPhone app. Meanwhile, drivers in Zone B will pay a reduced cost of $1.50/hr, plus the 25 cent charge.
Faisal Kalim, City of Regina director of community standards, said there is a concern that people are opting to avoid parking in downtown areas with the increased rates.
“We'll be reviewing the utilization rates of these areas.”
In terms of utilization rate, Zone B had been missing the city’s goal of 85 per cent utilization.
“Through the studies that we've done over the last year, we're sitting in the 30 per cent to 40 per cent utilization range,” said Kalim.
The goal of the utilization rates is to ensure anyone parking in a spot can walk to their destination within a block or so, noted Kalim.
Parking vouchers
As drivers can no longer pay for parking with coins, the city will offer parking vouchers at city hall.
The vouchers can be purchased in a bundle of five for $13.75 and are valid for one hour of use.
“The goal of this process (creating parking vouchers) was to ensure that we still have options for people, noting that the parking vouchers are pretty rigid in their use,” said Kalim.
Kalim didn’t comment when asked about the barriers people who don’t use smartphones could face, with only one location to pick up vouchers. However, he did point out PaybyPhone allows for various ways to pay for parking.
“There is a dial tone [option] and using your touch number device. So you don't actually need data on a cell phone to be able to pay for it.”
As for selling vouchers elsewhere, Kalim said the city hasn’t worked out a strategy or game plan yet.
“But we will continue to review, and it'll depend on the feedback we're getting from the community and essentially the needs of the community.”
Parking at the curb
Drivers no longer have to worry about how close they park to a meter.
As long as drivers have paid for parking, they can park anywhere along a curb, provided it is a legal parking space.
With this change, Kalim said it’s likely the city will remove several meters in the coming years.
One goal with this change is to reduce the number of parking tickets people receive.
“If we can reduce parking tickets, that's great. The goal for the city is that people come downtown and utilize [and] patronize our downtown businesses.”
All parking fines will also increase by $10 as of Wednesday.
Looking ahead, Kalim didn’t rule out the city adopting pay stations for parking, a method Saskatoon currently uses.
“There is possibilities and [we] will continue to engage with the community."
