UPDATE: 12 a.m. — The Vancouver Park Board passed a motion asking staff to report back on options for a parking policy that addresses affordability concerns at its lots.
Should locals get a break when they park at a Vancouver park?
The idea is on the table, according to Park Board Vice-Chair Catherine Evans, who said the high cost of parking at the city’s parks is keeping residents away.
She’s proposing new, discounted flat-rate parking passes for residents.
Evans said the idea grew from public concerns raised during consultation over the controversial — and now delayed — plan to implement pay parking at Spanish Banks.
“The concern was, ‘I’ve stopped going to Stanley Park because of the parking fees, and the only place left that was free was Spanish Banks,'” Evans said.
“And I thought, well, just keeping Spanish Banks free parking isn’t really going to solve that problem, because the problem is really that they’re not feeling that they can go to places like Stanley Park.”
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Currently, summer season parking at Stanley Park and Queen Elizabeth Park costs $3.50 per hour, or $13 for the day.
Evans said ideally, the board could create a full season pass for residents, along with day or weekend passes.
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“You could get a parking permit for a particular period of time… that would let you park in all park board parking lots — Queen Elizabeth Park, Stanley Park, all the beaches. And it would be particular to Vancouver residents who are living in Vancouver already and paying taxes.”
More than 40 per cent of the Park Board’s budget comes from fees and charges, and parking makes up a substantial portion of that.
But Evans said the board could make the idea work financially by continuing to charge the higher fees to tourists and by selling the passes to Vancouverites who would use the parks more often, describing it as a “win-win.”
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West End Business Improvement Association executive director Stephen Regan said the idea could provide a welcome break for some Vancouver residents looking to use facilities like Stanley Park. And he said it could provide an economic boost to some local businesses.
“If we had parking that was a little bit more available and well priced, it could be those are the kind of things where people come in and around the West End, they park for a day, they’ve got a place to shop, to eat, to rent a bike and then they enjoy Stanley Park,” he said.
But Regan said he’d like to see the proposal open a larger conversation about municipal parking policies. He said he’d rather see the province and federal government better fund cities, allowing them to do things like tie parking revenue directly to services.
Potential new park parking rates for Vancouver residents, along with a timeline for a rollout of the plan, have yet to be hammered out. Evans said she’d like to see it in place by this summer.
The park board is set to vote on the idea next Monday.
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