The revived economy has been cause for celebration in Vancouver, but as more job opportunities filter into the downtown area, the worse the parking situation has become.
For years, cars lined East Anderson Street behind the old Post Hospital. In the last two years — coinciding with a more vibrant downtown Vancouver — the line has steadily grown. Anywhere between 80 and 125 cars would wind down the street daily at the West Barracks, blocking fuel trucks and emergency access through the area.
In October, the city of Vancouver took action, or at least the first step toward remedying the situation.
Jan Bader, Vancouver’s program and policy development manager, said the city installed “No Parking” signs along one side of East Anderson Street. Cars can still park on other side of the street for now.
“This way it’s wide enough for emergency vehicles to get through and the fuel trucks (for the police headquarters),” Bader said. “As soon as the signs went up people started obeying them.”
For the most part, that is. Steve Kaspan, parking services manager, said a few citations have been written since the signs went up in October.
Bader said the signs were paid for from The Historic Trust budget for a total cost of $560.
“The parking department runs a pretty tight budget,” she said. “They typically don’t do signage and parking enforcement on the historic site.”
The historic site also posed a unique challenge to posting parking signs.
“We can’t dig on the historic site without going through a pretty extensive archaeological process,” Bader said. “So we did guerrilla signs, which are self-contained on their own post so you don’t have to dig.”
Some signs were also just mounted on the chain-link fence.
Problem still exists
The cars may have moved away from East Anderson Street, but that doesn’t mean the issue has been solved.
Mike True, president and CEO of The Historic Trust, said those cars have just relocated to a different part of the site.
“They’ve moved their cars into the parking lot for the barracks, which creates a lot of new challenges,” True said.
Much of the site is recently renovated and now features residential and commercial tenants. Those tenants have already started complaining about a lack of parking as people who work in downtown relocate their cars.
“We don’t necessarily have, to my knowledge, the ability to enforce parking other than in the lots we have control over,” he said. “It’s an issue I know the city is working on, but we need some resolution sooner rather than later, or it’s going to get out of hand and become a long-term parking lot.”
A lack of parking could also pose a challenge as more and more events are held at the site.
“Our hope is to be able to attract visitors to the historic site and maintaining parking is an important piece,” True said.
Enough for workers
The crux of the matter lies with available parking downtown for workers.
“I think it’s something we hear pretty consistently, people feel there’s a shortage of parking for employees,” Bader said.
But there is parking available at the moment for those who work downtown.
Kaspan said on-street permits are $57 a month and carpool permits are only $35.
“There is a fairly high demand for on-street permit spaces and the space availability varies depending on where you want to park (the area west of the courthouse has plenty of space),” Kaspan said in an email. “We have added 35 additional on-street permit spaces close to downtown during the past six months and are continuously looking for opportunities to add more.”
There are also private parking opportunities, like the lot at The Academy. But for some, the issue isn’t the limited parking but rather having to pay at all.
“There are people who do not want to pay for parking and will attempt to find free parking even if it means having to walk a considerable distance,” he said, as is the situation at the West Barracks.
To reduce the cost barrier, Kaspan said the parking department is exploring an hourly wage worker permit for on-street parking that would be less expensive for qualified employees than the monthly $57 permit. The permit would be an extension of Vancouver’s Downtown Association’s pilot parking program, which provides 20 parking permits at a reduced rate for hourly wage employees.
For The Historic Trust, any solutions are welcome. But True said he expects the problem to continue.
“The reality is with the economic growth of downtown and limited amount of parking that exists, it’s pressing other areas in the community,” True said.
