Kamloops has more than enough parking: report
Kamloops has more than enough parking in its busiest areas, but try telling Kamloopsians that.
A recent study shows the city's two urban centres have plenty of vacancies but residents continue to complain about lack of parking.
The surveyors found there is a public perception there aren't enough on-street parking spaces both downtown and along the Tranquille corridor. The stats found that wasn't true, according to the report.
The City commissioned the study in 2019, culminating with a 470-page report released this week. It was spurred because of that perception of a parking shortage, particularly downtown, deputy chief administrative officer Byron McCorkell said.
It surveyed how full the city's on-street spots and parking lots were until 2021, showing the Tranquille corridor and the downtown core have plenty of unused parking spaces.
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"The only time I hear we don't have a parking problem is in this chamber," Coun. Dale Bass said. "The issue we have to consider... is educating the public that we don't have a parking problem, we have an 'I don't want to walk' problem."
It also offered several suggestions for the City to make the best use of its parking spaces, including making its downtown parkades more attractive and charging for time along Tranquille Road.
Downtown drivers do tend to fill Victoria and Lansdowne streets, but demand stayed well below what was available over the course of the study from October 2019 to 2021.
"Especially in downtown, we are awash in parking," Coun. Nancy Bepple said.
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Since the report was focused on parking for drivers rather than other modes of transportation, Bepple suggested the city should continue to look at making core areas more accessible by bike or for walking.
If there is a parking crunch downtown, much of that could be attributed to hospital staff, but Coun. Mike O'Reilly noted there is a 535-spot parkade coming to the hospital, too. That could alleviate parking pressure in the area, he said.
The mayor told council to be mindful of any parking space removal or price increases, suggesting malls and department stores show a model where people are looking for easy-to-find parking. He said downtown business owners he's spoken with have voiced their concern that their customers need parking spaces easily available.
"What happens is when people come downtown for a restaurant, they go to other areas because they can't find parking," Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson said. "I think you've got to take a look at what all the big stores do, and they've got a lot of parking."
The report gave the city guidelines on how to address parking in future years, but it even suggests a continued surplus of parking spaces over the next 20 years, especially downtown.
The full report can be found online here.
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