ROB MURRAY: I’m speaking with Andy Esarte, the Manager of the Engineering Department for the Town of Canmore. We’re here to talk about the paid parking program that is rolling out in May or June. I know this is something that was put on the table and then it was taken off for 2020, and then again in 2021. Why, in 2022, is this the right time?

ANDY ESARTE: We’re still seeing the same pressures on our parking and infrastructure, and the same needs for more transit. If anything, visitation is growing. For this year we’ve introduced some changes that we think improve the program based on what we’ve learned up at Quarry Lake and with what was learned from the rollout last year in Banff.

RM: I think one of the biggest changes that locals should be aware of is this new resident pass system that’s going to be implemented. How’s this going to work?

AE: With the new pass residents will have similar privileges to what Banff residents see with their system, which is essentially the ability to park in pay zones for up to three hours per day and you can use that time over multiple sessions.

RM: Taking a look at the map, I notice there are a number of areas on the periphery of downtown Canmore where resident passes will be required as well.

AE: That’s right. One of the important parts with a program like this is managing spillover into residential areas. We saw this as a major challenge around Quarry Lake in 2020 and addressed it in 2021 with very successful resident parking zones. This year will be a little bit easier in that anyone with a resident parking pass will be able to park in those zones so it’s not an extra thing for those residents to administer.

RM: Is this going to be monitored to find out if there’s spillover in areas beyond what’s covered on the map so far, or opportunities to make changes?

AE: Absolutely. One of the nice things with an easier to administer system with a single pass for residents is that we were able to expand that zone, so we’ve started a little wider.

RM: Three hours is plenty of time if you’re running downtown to do some errands, or maybe go out for lunch or something like that. For the person who is working an 8 hour shift and has been used to driving downtown and parking downtown, what options are going to be available?

AE: Certainly there are more options than in previous years. We have fare-free transit as one of the primary ways in which we’re trying to encourage people to access the downtown, whether they’re employees or visitors. We also have continued to build out the pathway network to walk and cycle. Now, we recognize that isn’t going to serve the needs of everybody and that people have a need to drive, so there are several hundred stalls just outside of the town centre that are within a short five minute walking distance. There is still all of the employee parking onsite at businesses and there are about 350 private stalls in the town centre. We’re looking to see those stalls more efficiently utilized, and we think that with this system there’ll be incentive for people to make better use of those.

RM: I was listening with curiosity because, here at Mountain FM, we’re located on the corner of Railway and Main along with the Rose & Crown and New World Samurai, which is one of the closest “free” lots that will be adjacent to the paid zone. I was interested to find out that bylaw in Canmore has a program where private lot owners can register and bylaw would conduct enforcement. How does that work?

AE: That was a change made to the bylaw as part of the Quarry Lake rollout. The idea is that they now have the ability to enforce on private lots where there are spillover impacts from the paid parking program. That requires an agreement between the private landowner and bylaw, and they’ll enforce as their resources allow. They also have a sign package. It’s important to have clear signage on your site, so they have information for the type of signage that they recommend that will allow them to go and do that type of enforcement.

RM: Part of what Banff rolled out when it came to their paid parking program – an integral part of that was the large intercept lot at the train station. Do we have anything similar like that in Canmore? Is there an intercept-type parking system planned?

AE: Land is quite tight here and we don’t have the good fortune of having that type of space available in short walking distance to the town centre. We do have the area by Elevation Place and, for at least the near-term, continued use of the lot by Home Hardware. That serves as a part of the intercept parking. There are some streets that are available around the town centre that you can park and walk. Something that we really want to promote is that, for overnight visitors on Bow Valley Trail in particular, there are something like 2500 parking stalls available. So really building out infrastructure and encouraging those visitors to access the town centre by our new paths essentially turns a lot of that parking into intercept parking.

RM: With the paid parking revenues, I think another important piece of this is that Council has directed an increase in frequency for transit. People who perhaps work downtown and didn’t find that the bus schedule aligned with their schedule…that might be a little bit better in the future?

AE: Yes. What’s the Transit Commission is looking at is filling out those weekday and weekend times and getting alignment with some additional services are really able to sync up the local and regional routes. What we’ll find is not just an increase in frequency but better connectivity and operations overall.

RM: I think it’ll be a big change for a lot of people who have been used to essentially free parking in downtown Canmore, but a big part of the presentation was that that ‘free’ parking isn’t really free, is it?

AE: If you look at the amount of land we put into parking, it equates to about six stalls per vehicle owned. If you think about that in a place like Canmore where land is expensive and natural spaces are important to us…we’ve essentially paved a enormous portion of our community for the ability to store cars. Cars are essential to our lives and they’re not going away, but can we utilize that space more efficiently? Can we find ways to reduce, to some extent, the amount of parking we need? The costs of it are extremely high. You have to pay to maintain it. You have to pay to build it. It shows up in your housing costs. It shows up in your rents. If we can get more efficient with the way we use parking and more efficient in the way we move people, that’s certainly going to be a benefit.

RM: People can find out more details on the paid parking program here. I want to switch gears a little bit here. The last time you were on the show with me we spoke about the TIP20 project, aka. “the intersection”. There was a brief update in the recent council package about some hardware that you’re going to be getting to hopefully improve things a little.

AE: We’re working on getting a new cabinet installed. Anyone dealing with getting equipment during COVID times knows there are long lead times. This cabinet is about a year delayed. What that’s going to allow us to do is have a bit more flexibility in the phasing, and that’ll show up primarily in allowing right hand turn green time when there isn’t a pedestrian or a person bicycling present in the crosswalk. That will help to make the intersection more efficient. The other change we’re looking to make is in the positioning of the streetlights. Parts are on order. We recognize that for a number of people in a number of vehicles the visibility of the lights isn’t ideal. Moving those into a more ideal position will happen prior to the spring.

RM: When this intersection was introduced it was somewhat controversial. It’s a new kind of design for our community and fairly unique for this part of the world. Now that you’ve had some months to see how it works in real time, do you have any information or data to share? Are you happy with the functionality of this intersection?

AE: Certainly it’s meeting the intended goals of making that intersection safe and accessible for people to travel by all modes. I recognize that has come with an initial change that adds some delay, but what we need to recognize is that we don’t have the capacity in our road network and the design of our road network to continue to just add more vehicles. For example, we have 40 different access points onto Bow Valley Trail, and if we continue to expand the amount of vehicle traffic the network starts to break down at each of those accesses. We already see that, so moving more vehicles can’t be our focus. It has to be about making a system that’s accessible for people to travel by all modes and to encourage those modes so that we have the room on the road, not just at this intersection but throughout the network, for the vehicle movements to flow. It’s a short-term increase in delay, but if we’re successful in shifting mode, if we’re successful in making it feel safe and comfortable for all those who can and wish to walk and bicycle to do so, the road network will function, not just at this intersection, but throughout the core. That shift is something we’re starting to see happen.

RM: What’s next for TIP20?

AE: What’s next is to keep building the network out. We’re already seeing that each project we build brings cumulative benefits. We had a peak summer walk/cycle count of 4500 individual trips made through the intersection. That summer peak was split fairly evenly between walk and cycle. We still had, even though we have winter conditions, a thousand pedestrians go through the intersection on a peak day. The nice thing with this type of infrastructure is – not only do our kids get to use it to go to school and we get to enjoy it when we’re walking and using the pathways, but each year we are going to see an increase in the benefit that we receive from it. We pay all of the price upfront in terms of the build costs and construction impacts, but each year we will see a growth in the number of people that walk and cycle. Each project we complete is complimentary to the others. It’s now removing barriers for a larger proportion of people to be able to get out and do that. As we see an increase in that benefit, it will be the opposite that we see when we make strictly vehicle improvements which is where you get the benefit upfront but it decreases over time. You see that in Calgary – a new intersection goes in and at first the traffic lights flow. Within a short order of time traffic is back to being backed up and all the surrounding intersections are busy. That’s what next – to keep building out the network, and over time we will see net positive benefits where traffic flow improves and the number of people able to safely walk bicycle and use transit continues to grow.

Filed under: Canmore, Canmore Parking, Paid Parking