The City of Red Deer’s 1,878 downtown parking stalls — 1,150 on-street stalls and 728 off-street — are now under the umbrella of a comprehensive Parking Management Strategy to support economic activity and community objectives like optimal land use.
On Monday city council approved the strategy to promote efficient and effective parking management while supporting business vitality and sustainable transportation policies.
Mayor Tara Veer said accessible parking is one of the primary economic development tools that will help attract and retain businesses downtown.
“Right now there’s not a lot of integration or strong rationale between what charges apply to what streets. Really what the parking strategy will do will set a common standard for public lots both from a safety perspective and aesthetically,” Veer said.
“It also will look at a long-range financial strategy to make sure that we have enough parking in inventory, but not too much parking in inventory, with the broader objective of making sure there’s the right balance between accessible parking that’s available for people when they need it but also making sure that parking utility is financially sustainable.”
The strategy will focus on long-term planning as well as addressing more immediate issues like improving signage to alert drivers to available parking.
“The parkade often has vacancies in it but the signage at the entrance to the parkade isn’t strong enough to queue people to go there,” Veer said.
Four principles guiding for the strategy include:
- Customer focus by providing and maintaining an appropriate supple of affordable, secure, accessible, convenient and appealing public parking.
- Economic development by providing and promoting affordable and short-term parking services, and fair and consistent enforcement services that support local businesses, institutions and tourism.
- Multimodal transportation by promoting, establishing and maintaining programs and facilities that encourage the use of alternative modes of transportation including public transit, car/van pooling, taxis, auto-sharing, cycling and walking.
- Financial sustainability by ensuring revenues generated by the parking program are sufficient to wholly recover all related operating and life-cycle maintenance expenditures and contribute to a reserve fund to finance future parking system development, operation and promotion, and assist in the funding of related initiatives to encourage the use of alternative modes of transportation.