The City of Prince George has released the first set of statistics about parking downtown since the new rules came into effect in November.
“In November, we were averaging 1365 for the number of vehicles scanned each day, says Fred Crittenden, Manager of Bylaw Services. “Now that number is down between 1000 and 1100 by the end of January. So we’ve dropped about 300 vehicles per day on average.”
The number of tickets being issued has also gone down. In November, 244 people got tickets for parking on the street longer than allowed in the downtown area. In January, that dropped to 174. In the hospital parking zone, 77 tickets were issued in November, compared to just 32 in January.
The amount of money going into hourly and daily pay stations has gone up significantly. In October, the City collected $8,536. In November, the figure jumped to $19,911 and as of January, it was $22,240.
Crittenden says more people are paying for long term parking as well.
“Our vacancy rate at our monthly rental stalls has dropped from 22.7% down to just under 19%. Our usage of our hourly/daily lots has increased too.”
Vacancy rates for hourly and daily stalls was at 57% before the new rules came into effect. It’s now about 24%
So things appear to be moving in the right direction, according to the City. Now, there are some changes coming to downtown parking availability. As of March 1, the parkade at 5th and Domininion will close for scheduled maintenance. It will remain closed until early September. Crittenden says the parkade accommodates about 205 monthly tenants, most of whom are being relocated to nearby parking options.
The closure will take a toll on off-street parking though, lowering it by about 6%. That’s 100 or so stalls, according Crittenden.
“The other one that we know that is coming up this spring will be the closing of our 4th Avenue lot right by the Wood Innovation and Design Centre there. That’s for the new development that’s going in. Those stalls are all hourly and daily stores.”
But Crittenden says there’s no need to worry – the City still has plenty of parking capacity.
“I think we can accommodate everybody quite well. One of the things that we’re noticing is that, because the parking rates for hourly and daily did go up on January 1st, we’re seeing less people parking for a whole day.”
If you plan on spending more than three hours downtown between 7am and 5pm on any given day, your most affordable option is to find an off-street lot or parkade to park in.