In an effort to turn the tide on an annual $1.25 million deficit in its parking fund, the city of Vancouver is looking to increase parking rates in the downtown Vancouver core.
During a September 28 meeting, the city’s Parking Advisory Committee (PAC) approved initial authority for the city manager to adjust parking rates – a move the committee has discussed since April. The PAC consists of downtown residents, business owners and stakeholders.
“The PAC support allows the city manager to exercise administrative discretion to set parking meter rates up to $1.25 per hour and parking permit rates up to $100 per month,” explained Michael Merrill, parking services manager for the city of Vancouver. “The initial discussion point was $1.00 per hour at meters and $20 across the board for parking permits.”
Current rates, established in 2009, are $0.50 per hour for parking meters and monthly parking permits ranging from $15 (carpool) to $84 (Vancouvercenter Garage).
Dealing with a deficit
Merrill explained that, in an effort to help revitalize downtown, the city made large investments in parking structures in the early 2000’s including the Murdock Garage, Main Place Garage and Riverview Tower Garage. These structures were all successfully maintained by the city and eventually sold to private parties.
To cover the cost of these investments, the general fund ended up subsidizing the parking fund to the tune of $1.25 million (approx.) per year. The city has made it a priority to address this ongoing deficit as money being collected from parking meters, parking fines and the sale of parking permits is not enough (at current rates) to sustain the fund.
Two parking garages that remain under city ownership are Vancouvercenter at 6th and Columbia and Columbia Bank at 5th and Broadway. Once these have been paid off and sold, the city will have succeeded in realizing its goal to be divested of the off-street parking business – a goal that was identified back in 2007 and restated in 2011.
Low fees = less value
Although a rate hike is never something the public wants to see, downtown resident and business owner Todd Boulanger, who has held a number of transportation positions in his career including senior transportation planner for the city of Vancouver, noted that a parking garage collecting less than fair market value in fees will appraise lower and be less attractive for private development to enter into the business.
“Private property owners say the city’s set fees are so low it makes no sense for them to build parking structures because they can’t compete,” he said.
Vancouver City Manager Eric Holmes echoed that sentiment.
“Now more than ever, it is important for the city to manage our parking assets to maximize parking availability and position ourselves in the overall parking market to increase the potential for development of additional parking, whether privately or through public/private partnerships. Assuring our rates are benchmarked to the current market is an important part of that strategy,” said Holmes in an email. “In the end, we want to support the excellent things going on downtown, while assuring great customer service to our parking customers.”
Another issue that Boulanger pointed out with current parking rates is that by underpricing this public asset, it can effectively undermine a portion of the city’s own transportation plan. He said that present parking rates are lower than a monthly bus pass, effectively discouraging mass transit ridership into a dense urban core.
Finding solutions
Boulanger and other stakeholders are not necessarily on board with steep and swift increases to solve the ongoing deficit, however. They maintain that smaller, annual increases as opposed to larger ones every eight to nine years are more widely accepted.
“Cities often wait too long to raise these rates,” Boulanger pointed out. “When they put off necessary cost increases, it can be a big shock and can make it more difficult to make fee changes.”
Instead, he strongly encouraged looking at all the options before moving forward, including doing away with the free 20-minute button on meters. Boulanger maintains that this is immediate lost revenue and the complimentary feature has been abused over the years with some people even using it as their all-day parking solution. Conversely, he said it causes others to incur parking tickets when they incorrectly estimate how long an errand might take.
Lee Rafferty, executive director of Vancouver’s Downtown Association (VDA), was another stakeholder who challenged the committee with food for thought while appreciating that the parking fund deficit must be addressed.
“When we first gathered, the discussion was along the lines ‘We have a financial problem that must be solved,’” she said. “The plan was to double the hourly rates and add $20 to each parking pass as soon as the first of the year. We felt that it was too soon to do that without a comprehensive plan for parking as a whole.”
In the end, Rafferty felt the joint sessions were productive and all sides were heard. VDA suggested a tangible takeaway be offered to parkers in the downtown core such as modern, credit card-accepting pay stations; a user-friendly parking app; and/or better signage to direct users to available parking. VDA also felt the timeline for the increase should be clearly defined and communicated so that the public would have time to prepare for it and budget accordingly.
Along those lines, Boulanger thinks the city needs to do a better job as a whole to educate downtown workers, in particular, on their commute options. He noted that resources such as Destination Downtown, a commute trip reduction program, are underutilized and could go a long way in freeing up appropriate parking spaces for long-term use and carpool commuters if marketed more aggressively.
Other options brought to the table were increases in parking ticket fees and employee incentives.
“We needed the city to do some creative thinking along with us to figure out where downtown employees should park,” explained Rafferty. “The Vine coming soon will hopefully take some of our downtowners out of on-street parking and riding this new form of public transportation. Additionally, we will continue to urge mass transit use, carpooling and cycling to work. We urged the city to help locate some potential satellite lots out of the city center but along C-Tran routes that would serve a vital purpose.”
C-TRAN took the opportunity to restate their immediate goal as it pertains to servicing the downtown Vancouver core, rather than weigh in with a direct comment on the parking rate adjustment conversation.
“C-TRAN provides substantial service in downtown Vancouver, and this service will be significantly enhanced by the opening of The Vine bus rapid transit line, which will operate between Turtle Place and Vancouver Mall,” said Christine Selk, C-TRAN communication and public affairs manager.
Although there is no firm timeline for the proposed increase, Merrill offered that some type of rate adjustment could be seen early in 2017. He also said that, through conversations with the VDA, they’re looking at allocating some generated revenue toward modernizing equipment and other parking improvements, as opposed to it all going toward debt repayment.
