FACE TO FACE: Should Coquitlam and Port Moody have pay parking?
It wasn't two months ago that my left-leaning colleague used this space to promote the idea of free transit for everybody. "Never-mind the cost," he bellowed, "the evil corporations and the rich will pay for it."
I'm paraphrasing, of course.
This week he has made his NDP brethren proud again: This time, he's asking for free parking throughout the Tri-Cities.
The city of Coquitlam has pay parking spots in some Town Centre locations. With more condos being built and the Evergreen Line coming, there are going to be a lot more.
Members of Port Moody city council have also recently mused about adding pay parking at Rocky Point Park and their city's rec complex.
This is the right time for all Tri-City councils to develop comprehensive pay parking strategies. While we're still considered the suburbs, this isn't the Tri-Cities of the 1980s. We now have a population of over 220,000 people - with the traffic and congestion to show for it.
In other cities, metered parking has proven to decrease traffic on busy streets by encouraging turnover of parking spaces and deterring commuters from using on-street parking for extended periods of time.
It also gets people out their cars and onto transit. Can you imagine the traffic nightmare in downtown Vancouver after a Canucks game if street parking were free?
I understand that some people will say metered parking is simply cash-grab. But I think it's a fair cash-grab.
Automobiles cost municipalities millions of dollars each year for road maintenance, traffic management, policing and bylaw enforcement. Pay parking is one way to directly recover these costs from drivers.
How much money can be raised depends on a number of variables, including the number of meters, fees for parking and penalties for overstay.
The city of Prince George, which has a third of the population of Tri-Cities, earned a net revenue of about $80,000 through its metered parking pilot project. A 2010 report prepared for the city of North Vancouver predicted that city could net $1 million a year.
We all would love free parking but most of us realize that, in the downtowns and high-traffic commercial areas of a large community, metered parking is a necessary evil.
Most of us also realize that there's no such thing as "free."
Andy Radia is a Coquitlam resident and political columnist who writes for Yahoo! Canada News and Vancouver View Magazine. He has been politically active in the Tri-Cities, having been involved with election campaigns at all three levels of government, including running for Coquitlam city council in 2005.
