Victoria council has unanimously agreed to have staff look at how to reduce the number of motor vehicles travelling around downtown, and to explore establishing a new parkade or other public parking options.
Mayor Marianne Alto noted that the original motion brought forward by councillors Matt Dell and Dave Thompson limited the investigation of parking options to the north end of the city.
She amended it to instead explore areas “outside the downtown.”
“It would be my preference to provide a little more latitude to staff and also perhaps to encourage the conversation for staff to connect with their counterparts in adjacent municipalities,” Alto said at a Thursday meeting.
“The north side of downtown is logical, but I also think that there are potentially other areas as well.” The motion was designed to address parking and congestion in the downtown core, and encourage people to leave their cars outside the core and make the last part of their trips into downtown on foot, by bike, transit or other means.
“We’re trying to create a downtown environment that is more pedestrianized and has less vehicles moving around our downtown core and [has] more space for people — pedestrians, cycling lanes, rapid transit and light rail,” Dell said.
Dell and Thompson had floated the idea of the city building its first new parkade in 35 years, or finding ways of increasing parking capacity by encouraging developers to include public parking in new mixed-use development projects.
Staff have not been given a time limit for the study and council has said it does not need to see a report for at least another year.
If the city goes ahead with a new parkade, it would be the first downtown parkade since one was built as part of the Victoria Conference Centre, which opened in 1989. That facility, however, is not run by the city.
The last city-operated parkade to be built is the one under the Greater Victoria Public Library’s central branch, which opened in the 1980s.
“This is about long-term planning. And I think this is the right time to be doing that and having those conversations,” said Coun. Jeremy Caradonna.
The Downtown Victoria Business Association estimates the city has lost about 2,200 parking spaces over the last eight years, the vast majority of them as a result of private land being developed. The city estimates about 200 parking spaces have been removed due to the bike lane network.
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