BANFF – The Town of Banff hopes to have its system for Banffites to register for the residential parking permit system up and running in mid-April ahead of rolling out the visitor pay parking program in May.
Banff residents will be able to register their vehicles to be allowed to park for free for three consecutive hours each day in the paid downtown zone.
In addition, residents can register an unlimited number of vehicles for their dwelling, and any resident will be allowed to park on the restricted downtown residential streets.
Councillor Chip Olver was worried the registration system may crash when residents go to register online.
“In implementation, in terms of registration, we always hear of registration systems opening up and crashing,” she said during a governance and finance committee meeting on Monday (March 8).
“Are we going to have the ability for people to register without things crashing?”
Tony Clark, the Town of Banff’s manager of municipal enforcement, said he hopes registration can open by mid-April to allow several weeks for residents to get their applications in and processed.
“I don’t think we’re going to get a rush at the zero hour the minute we open it up, that everyone’s going to start applying,” he said. “I don’t have concerns about system crashes or anything like that.”
The plan allows for any Banff resident owning a vehicle or any licensed Banff businesses with vehicles used in their operations to apply for a resident parking permit that will give the benefit of three free hours of consecutive parking per day as well as an allowance to park in the controlled residential parking zone. Residents who live in the controlled residential parking zone on streets surrounding the downtown core will have the added ability to apply for guest parking permits. There is no cost for these permits, and no limits on how many resident parking permits are allowed per residence.
The resident parking permit system aims to prevent visitors from parking on the designated downtown residential streets and to encourage long-term use of the free parking at the train station, along Bow Avenue and Bear Street parkade.
Parking will be enforced using licence plate recognition technology used by patrolling staff.
Banff’s municipal enforcement department will also offer a grace period for 14 days when the visitor pay parking and residential parking permit programs begin, to allow for further testing and to work out any bugs that may come up.
“I think that’s probably fair with enforcement and it’s a great test of the system,” said Clark.
“You can write the tickets, but they can be warnings… there’s some impact on revenue obviously, but definitely it’s worthwhile to do the test.”
Coun. Olver voiced strong support for the grace period in order to test the new system.
She said the visitor pay parking component of the system is relatively straight forward and has been successfully implemented in many other municipalities and jurisdictions.
“But success for me will be registered by the smooth operation of the residential section of this,” Coun. Olver said.
“We really listened to residents in designing this system and it’s really essential for me that this goes smoothly for our residents.”
Mayor Karen Sorensen said the topic has come before residents in the past, but the traffic congestion and parking problems are not going away and are expected to increase by two per cent each year.
“We have benefits that were not available in the past to make this work,” she said.
“With an effective transit system, a new large free parking lot, and controls to prevent non-residents from parking on residential streets downtown, this new system will maintain three-hour parking for residents, and provide options for visitors – free or pay parking just like in other cities’ downtown areas.”
The following are examples of how the parking system will work for residents:
- A resident from Middle Springs or Cave Avenue could park for free beside the Banff Post Office from 1 to 2 p.m., then move to the Bear Street surface parking lot from 2 to 4 p.m. – for free because it is three consecutive hours in the paid zone
- A resident could park for free on Lynx Street from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., but if they park again after 1 p.m. – three hours after the start of the first parking session that day – the resident would need to either park for free in one of the free spaces in the parkade or pay to park in a paid space downtown.
- A resident from Spray Avenue could park outside a residence on Muskrat Street all day, if their vehicle is registered with a permit.
