Editor:
This is my fourth or fifth visit to Banff, the first occurring in 1962 when I was a boy, the most recent in 2008. Despite the increased traffic, Banff remains a charming town.
I obviously don’t know much about the paid parking issue, but when there are signs in store windows opposing it, it’s clear that passions are running high. Please allow me to offer some advice from south of the border, Los Angeles, where the parking situation is much worse.
In the City of Los Angeles, there is no mass transit, light or heavy rail infrastructure, unlike other major cities in the United States (e.g., Chicago, New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco) or the world (e.g., London, Paris, Barcelona). That infrastructure is finally being built, but will not be completed for years or decades. In the meantime, one must rely on a car to get around.
The situation was exacerbated some years ago by the person who was director of the Department of City Planning (Gail Goldberg) who wanted to get people out of their cars. She thought that the way to accomplish this was to force people to stop using cars (so they would have to use the nonexistent public transit system) by approving development with insufficient parking.
This method didn’t work. Subsequently, city parking and revenue officials decide to raise revenue by increasing meter parking rates from 25 cents an hour to $1 or even $2 an hour, and by decreasing the time allowed to as few as 20 minutes in some locations. This only made things worse for the residents of Los Angeles and the small local businesses they use.
The economic death of the Westwood Village area near UCLA is perhaps the best example of the city’s utter lack of success in these efforts, where numerous vacant storefronts dot a once vibrant commercial neighbourhood.
The cities surrounding Los Angeles (Culver City, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Pasadena) adopted a different and more successful strategy: building large, conveniently located parking structures in or near major commercial areas, in many cases even offering one or two hours of free parking before payment is required. These cities and their businesses are thriving.
So my suggestion for Banff is to follow the example of the successful cities: build above or underground parking structures near enough to downtown so visitors, who I imagine overwhelmingly arrive by car, can find convenient parking.
This is what Calgary, closer by, also has done. If meters are added downtown, be reasonable, but I would also ask if anyone has considered pedestrianizing the area bounded by Banff Avenue, Bear and Lynx Streets, Buffalo Street, and Wolf Street (of course, this could only be successful if the parking structures were built).
Now that would really be something good for Banff.
Daniel Fink,
Beverly Hills, CA
