REGINA — The City of Regina says roughly 1,000 bundles of parking vouchers have been sold since being introduced in April.
The vouchers were part of several changes to the city’s parking bylaws, including the removal of coin payment options for parking meters, which faced backlash from residents.
As an alternative in-person payment option, the vouchers were introduced as bundles of five sold at city hall.
“The [1,000] books sold translates to about 5,000 parking vouchers themselves, 5,000 hours of parking if you will,” said Faisal Kalim, director of community standards at the City of Regina.
Based on discussions with other municipalities when talking about the parking bylaw changes, Kalim said the number of vouchers sold is higher than expected.
“I think [it shows] the changes that we're making, like they were reasonably fast. So I think there was a lot of interest within the community to make sure that there was another option for people.”
Questions arose about possibly receiving tickets for parking in a zoned area while waiting to purchase vouchers inside.
Kalim said the city has switched lay-bys from required metered payment to a free, temporary parking area.
“The expectations [were] that if somebody would come down to city hall and use the parking voucher, they would be able to utilize that parking zone.”
From this action, no concerns have been raised about tickets arising from waiting to purchase vouchers, noted Kalim.
In the event a person receives a ticket for waiting, Kalim said it’s likely the city wouldn’t overturn the ticket.
“The ticket would most likely stand, especially if it were to go through the court process and be heard before a justice of the peace.”
As for expanding where parking vouchers are sold, Kalim said it’s a possibility before the end of the year.
“It would mostly be our leisure centres and places that actually do accept cash.”
Even with having a voucher option, Kalim said the city recommends people use the PaybyPhone option.
