Paid parking may be coming to the Tranquille Corridor on the Kamloops North Shore in the future.
North Shore Business Improvement Association (NSBIA) Executive Director Jeremy Heighton says it is because of significant growth across the North Shore, adding the BIA is forecasting some congestion issues as that development takes place.
“With that will come the inevitable challenge of you know, ‘how much parking do we need? How much parking do we have?'” Heighton noted.
“So we are forecasting there’s a potential that the city will come to us and say, ‘we want to put metered parking along those corridors’ and so as a BIA our question really is, ‘what do you feel about that?'”
Formal discussions about paid parking have not started with the city of Kamloops, but Heighton suspects that will be coming in the future.
“During mid-days, there are 2,000 vehicles an hour that travel up and down the Tranquille Corridor. An increase in office spaces and an increase in commercial properties, that 2,000 could become 4,000 quite easily,” he told NL News.
“And if there’s 4,000 vehicles a day coming in and out of the corridor looking for parking, we need to strategize that now.”
NSBIA staff are gathering feedback right now to take to the board before a decision is made one way or the other, which Heighton says may not happen for several years.
“Do we need a parkade over here? Do we need the meter parking system? What do we need? Sometimes you speculate on these things, you share that with your community, you say ‘what do you think about that?’ and you get that feedback and that helps you formulate those ideas,” said Heighton.
He says he sees several positives if it were to go ahead including having bylaw officers along the corridor all day, who could then deal with some of our community challenges. Another positive would be revenue to fund community policing including street patrols, while also helping fund street level enhancements on the North Shore.
The city hasn’t publicly discussed paid parking on the North Shore, but there is a broad parking study that will go before city council later this year.
