The Town of Banff will start to crack down on enforcement of parking infractions next week as part of a plan to ease Banff’s parking crunch.
On July 15, a hired parking management company, Vinci Park, will use Licence Plate Recognition (LPR) technology to begin ticketing people violating time limit parking spaces, as well as a new regulation that prevents vehicles returning to the same lot within six hours.
The user pay parking trial on five downtown surface lots does not go into effect until Aug. 1.
“We are aware that in our busiest season we have a shortfall of parking stalls and we are looking at many ways to address that,” said Mayor Karen Sorensen.
Increased enforcement of time limited parking begins on July 15, which will include patrols earlier in the morning, as well as looking at no returns to the same parking lots within six hours. That applies to all surface lots downtown and the Bear Street parkade.
On Aug. 1, the Town begins its user-pay parking trial in five downtown surface lots. The lots include a Bear Street lot opposite Bison Courtyard, a Bear Street lot between Town Hall and Nesters, Buffalo Street lot behind the Clock Tower Mall, Beaver Street lot behind the visitor centre and Beaver-Caribou lot behind the Mount Royal Hotel.
The user pay trial will run until Oct. 31 and drivers will be charged $2 an hour to park. Handicapped parking stalls in these lots will remain free.
At the same time, increased enforcement on time limit infractions will continue in the Bear Street Parkade, as well as the Central Park parking lot.
First-time warnings will be effective for the downtown core only for time limit infractions, the no return within six hours regulation and user-pay parking infractions. However, there will be no warnings for illegally parking in a handicapped space, just tickets.
Fines for violating time zones are $50, but will be dropped to $30 if paid within 10 days. It’s a $250 fine for parking in handicapped zones without a permit.
The LPR technology will be mounted on a vehicle, which will do continuous circuits of downtown streets where there are time limits for parking in effect, capturing the licence plate numbers of vehicles. Hand-held devices may also be used.
Vinci has already started gathering data through LPR technology. With the use of a GPS, it pinpoints location, records the licence plate and stamps it with a GPS location. When they drive by an hour later, for example, they can tell if the same car is still parked there.
“Over a period of time, patterns will begin to develop and they will be able to show whether it’s a visitor or a resident,” said Diana Waltmann, the Town of Banff’s communications manager. “If it’s parked in the same vicinity, for the same time, for a month, it’s going to be a resident likely who’s parking near their home or place of employment.”
A group of residents continues to collect signatures for a petition to fight paid parking in Banff, and points to a plebiscite in 2000 in which residents soundly shot down the concept of paid parking.
At press time, the Town of Banff had not received the petition. Residents said they are close to meeting the minimum required goal of 824 valid signatures. “The petition is going fantastic,” said resident Alanna Pettigrew.
Mayor Sorensen said she wanted to stress that the pay parking trial is not about revenue generation.
“This is about improving visitor experience by seeing if having user paid lots provides more parking for our visitor population on a short-term basis, and about changing Bow Valley local behaviour around using some of those primary spots through increased enforcement,” she said.
“We completely understand that local residents at times need to drive and we are continuing to provide opportunity for local residents to drive and park, but over the trial these five core lots will be user pay in an effort to see if that changes local behaviour, and to monitor if there’s a willingness on the part of the visitor to pay for convenience.”
Traffic data collected by the Town of Banff showed that traffic volume over the Canada Day weekend increased by 25 per cent over the previous long weekend. On July 1, there were 25,465 vehicles per day, June 30, 23,491 vehicles per day, June 29 24,321 vehicles per day, and June 28 23,109 vehicles per day.
