“I’m paying to work here”: North Vancouver employees, businesses worry about paid parking

Chole Stewart has lived and worked in North Vancouver for her entire life, but now there is a new element in this equation: She will be paying to work here.

Stewart works as a bartender at the Streetcar Brewing and is unhappy with new parking regulations. With street parking in effect, she has to park in a city lot across from her work. She will be spending nearly $15 per shift to work. “It’s like an entire hour of my wage just to park here,” she says.

City of North Vancouver’s phased paid parking rollout began in Lower Lonsdale on September 17 and will move to Central Lonsdale through mid-October before expanding outside the core commercial areas by mid-November. The changes follow earlier plans on the City’s intention to expand paid parking in Lower and Central Lonsdale.

The plan introduces pay parking in busy commercial districts, updates to the resident parking permit system, more accessible spaces, and additional short-term loading zones. It was in April that council endorsed the plan following what it claims is two years of community feedback and regional research. According to the City, the goal is to improve parking reliability, support businesses with turnover, and make access fairer for residents and visitors.

Local business take a hit

However, local business owners and visitors are not sure it will have the effects CNV claims it will have. Randolph Sidoo, a visitor from Toronto, was struggling to understand the parking machine this past Sunday. He had come to North Vancouver to dine because of the ‘crazy’ parking in Vancouver. He was surprised to find paid parking on Lonsdale.

Sidoo said the price is reasonable now but it will drive him away if it gets too expensive. “I don’t mind paying. We pay for parking all the time. If I go to a basketball game for an event, I’ll pay 35 bucks to park. But this isn’t an event. This is just coming to patronize, to absorb the area, appreciate the area,” he said.

Siddo said aspects of the machine are confusing. “There’s no rates, so you don’t know. There’s no maximum time…And then it kind of locked out at two hours and 50 minutes or something like that. So I don’t know if I could have done more or less. So it’d be nice to have a little rate thing there and if there’s a maximum time, that’ll help.”

He was unsure if this would be sufficient time for his outing. “I could have done more time because if I go to eat, I’ll have to come back and park again. So it was not as efficient as I thought.”

Matt Sturrock, the owner and founder of Helicon Books, said parking has been a huge issue and it has directly affected his business. “A year ago, we had an event and people were calling to say they just couldn’t find parking and turned around and left. So yeah, we’re hoping there’s going to be greater churn and people will sort of observe the rules and move along when they need to.”

Although he was notified before the parking changes occurred, Sturrock said he was not asked for input during the process.

“We had a couple of guys who came around a month or two ago to warn us that this was being implemented, and they were very approachable and had lots of answers for whatever questions  we might pose. But I don’t remember there ever being a discussion about this before the regulation was implemented.”

Sturrock said there was an astonishing number of spots available a week after the changes were announced. “We had to wonder whether it was related, or whether it was sort of a brief downturn that we often experience in October before the big push to Christmas.”

So far he is unsure if it has affected his business, either positively or negatively, especially as they have their own parking spot. Sturrock said the most interaction he has had with the new system is giving patrons advice. “We’ve had a few people wander in asking if we can tell them how the terminal works or where it is…most times when I tell them that they’ve got half an hour of free time, that’s usually long enough for them to conduct a quick errand.” He said he was not aware that drivers have to register even for the free half-hour period. “That’s insane. Why would they have to register?”

Peter Turcotte, owner of Big Pete’s Collectables, says the city did a “woeful job” at making machines available. “They have one across the street, but nobody knows it is there…most people just walk around wondering, where do I pay? I think they just expect people will use the app, but a lot of people don’t have data or don’t have a phone. They need to have a place to pay every few spots, just like they do downtown.” Turcotte added that more signage is necessary and a map could be helpful.

Meanwhile workers like Stewart wondered if there are more creative solutions the city could use for businesses in the are.

“If you live here, you can register your vehicle so you don’t have to pay. If businesses are offered, maybe a similar thing, where they can get two or three passes to hand off to certain employees.”

She says the city could probably have the pay parking end at six as opposed to 9 p.m.

She added that the parking is confusing, noting that customers have been having a hard time locating the machines. She also criticized the use of a new parking app instead of using the same one that Vancouver does.

The City says it will closely monitor how changes impact parking and will consider further adjustments in locations where parking outcomes do not align with objectives.