The Town of Banff is trying to make some smart decisions to eliminate parking woes in the tourist town.
Town council has agreed to set aside $15,000 in the capital budget for 2015 for the design of a comprehensive Smart parking system for off-street parking spots, and $590,000 in 2016 for installation.
Officials say improving the experience for visitors is one of the key recommendations of the transportation master plan, which also indicates it’s necessary to make it quicker and easier for tourists to find parking spots.
Darren Enns, senior planner with the Town of Banff, said funding for the $610,000 project could be linked to the paid parking discussion, which is due to happen sometime this year. The Town recently went out to public tender to investigate paid parking options.
“The aim is to reduce congestion on roadways in terms of how quickly we can get them to our parking stalls,” said Enns. “This is a big ask, and in any other community of this size we wouldn’t have to do this, but we are a visitor destination.”
Smart parking is a vehicle parking system that helps drivers find a vacant spot. Using sensors in each parking space that detect the presence or absence of a vehicle, signs direct incoming drivers to available locations.
This project involves configuring all of the townsite’s 416 off-street parking stalls with smart parking technology. This would include individual stall monitoring, as well as satellite directional signage at key places to guide visitors to available parking stalls.
The Smart parking system was initially pitched by administration to be designed this year and installed in 2015, but Mayor Karen Sorensen convinced most her colleagues to bump it back a year.
“Parking is one of our main focus areas in the transportation master plan,” she said.
“This type of technology and what we might do here has to play in the same sandbox as some of the other decisions that have to be made around paid parking.”
