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Saint John chamber of commerce CEO proposes eliminating free parking

Click to play video: 'Saint John business leader calls for the end of free parking'
Saint John business leader calls for the end of free parking
WATCH: After Global News talked to a Saint John teenager pushing for an expansion to a two-hour free parking window, the CEO of the city’s chamber of commerce is saying that the best move for the city would be to scrap free parking altogether – Jan 20, 2020

After Global News talked to a Saint John teenager pushing for an expansion of the two-hour free parking window in Saint John’s uptown, the CEO of the city’s chamber of commerce is saying the best move for the city would be to scrap free parking altogether.

In Saint John’s south and central peninsula, free parking is available for two hours between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays. After 5 p.m. and on weekends there’s no time limit and it remains free.

Erin Cusack, 18, says the two-hour limit isn’t fair to students who attend Saint John High School and St. Malachy’s Memorial High School.

“It doesn’t make sense for students to have to worry about leaving class to go move their car,” Cusack told Global News last week.

She’s proposed a few solutions that would assist students parking in the uptown core.

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But David Duplisea, the CEO of the city’s chamber of commerce, is saying that’s a bad idea.

“There are options for students rather than encouraging them all to bring their cars into the uptown core,” he says.

“We already subsidize school buses and things like that through our taxes and we also subsidize city transit.”

The City of Saint John imposes a two-hour parking limit through much of the south and central peninsula. Travis Fortnum

Duplisea lives and works uptown.

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He says every day he sees people manipulating the two-hour system; moving their car from one spot to another, moving their co-workers’ cars for them, even erasing the chalk mark the parking authority uses to track parking.

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“We don’t have a parking problem in Saint John, we have a problem with people who want to pay for parking in Saint John.”

According to the city’s website, there are 5,000 on-street parking spaces in uptown.

A map shows the residential zones in Saint John’s south and central peninsula. Saint john Parking Commission

Those spaces need to accommodate residents as well as people commuting in for school, work or errands throughout the day.

“There is a way to have residential, business as well as students all coincide within one existing area,” Duplisea says.

“One of the challenges is that there is free parking in certain areas of the uptown core and people find a loophole to be able to come and take those spaces.”

That very loophole is what previously took Cusack and her classmates out of class – to shuffle their cars into new spaces for their next two free hours.

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Click to play video: 'High school students in uptown Saint John constantly worried about parking tickets'
High school students in uptown Saint John constantly worried about parking tickets

Duplisea says the best thing for the city would be to ditch that free parking altogether.

“There’s low-hanging fruit there for the city at a time when we need the revenue,” he says.

“At a time when we’re looking for climate change policies as well, we should be kind of discouraging people coming in with their car into the core.

“Instead, we’re making it easy through our loopholes for people just to come in and park anywhere.”

Cusack’s proposed leniency in parking guidelines has yet to be discussed by the city’s parking commission.

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