City wants to cash in on parking
Plan would raise fees, install meters on Locke, Ancaster and Stoney Creek
January 07, 2010
Ken Peters
http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/698398
The meter is running out on free on-street parking on Locke Street and Hamilton’s suburban downtowns.
City staff want parking meters installed on the trendy west Hamilton commercial street as well as in Stoney Creek (King Street), Ancaster (Wilson Street) and Waterdown (Dundas Street).
The city also wants to bump on-street parking meter rates to $1 per hour city-wide, up from the 50 cents per hour charged for most streets and the 85 cents an hour rate in Dundas, the only suburb that now has metered downtown parking.
The city has close to 3,000 parking meters.
The meter rate hikes are expected to add $800,000 a year to city coffers. Putting meters on the four proposed streets would generate another $650,000, including more than $150,000 from Locke Street alone.
Hamilton politicians are set to consider the recommendations next Monday.
If approved, the new meters and rate increase would go into effect July 1.
Tony Greco, chairperson of the Locke Street Business Improvement Area, said he has been battling to keep meters off the commercial street for close to 30 years.
He would prefer to see the city beef up enforcement of the bylaw permitting a maximum of two free hours of parking.
Barring that, Greco, who has had a hairstyling shop on Locke for 42 years, would like to see the city provide a parking lot for area shoppers.
“This is such a unique place and we don’t want to lose that,” he said, adding that charging for parking on metered streets is likely to result in shoppers parking on residential streets instead.
Hamilton Councillor Brian McHattie, who represents Locke Street, hopes to convince his colleagues to provide a parking lot in the area in exchange for the paid parking on the street.
“I only support it (paid parking) if there is an off-street lot,” he said. “The two have to go hand in hand and have to go simultaneously.”
McHattie said it could be two years before a parking lot is provided.
Two suburban councillors support the meters.
Stoney Creek’s Maria Pearson sees it as a matter of fairness given that paid parking in the old city and Dundas subsidizes the other areas.
And Ancaster’s Lloyd Ferguson said he is leaning towards supporting the Ancaster BIA, which has voted unanimously to support the meters on Wilson Street.
“Parking is in such short supply that the merchants want the turnover. I suspect the general public will not like it. But I have not heard anyone say they are strongly opposed to it,” Ferguson said.
Prior to the 2001 Hamilton amalgamation, local municipalities operated their own parking programs.
City staff say the average fee for one hour of parking in Ontario is $1.46.