I hate parking in Regina. It makes my blood boil. For a guy with a heart condition, who occasionally has to go to Regina to deal with said heart condition, let's just say it's not good for my ticker.
The Leader Post in a July 14 editorial noted, "Though the multi-million dollar ticket blitz has been welcomed by some, others see it as an aggressive grab for money by the city.
"In the past two years, extra parking officers have been hired - 20 now work on weekdays instead of eight, for example - and weekend and evening enforcement has also been beefed up.
"It has resulted in a blizzard of tickets for everything from parking at expired meters to stopping in a bus lane, parking too close to a crosswalk, fire hydrant or the corner of a street. Almost 100,000 tickets were handed out last year compared with 72,000 in 2012. From January to May this year, almost 41,000 tickets were issued.
"It's expected parking violators will pad the city's bottom line to the tune of $3.4 million this year, compared with $1.95 million in 2012."
The editorial concludes, "In our view, the bottom line is that vehicle owners who don't want to pay parking fines merely have to obey the law, whether parking at a meter or on a street with clear time restriction. And it's just common sense not to stop in a bus lane or park next to a fire hydrant.
"It might sound harsh, but it doesn't matter if a meter has only expired by a minute or a quarter of an hour - a ticketable offence has been committed."
As someone from Estevan, I find Regina parking maddening. More tickets are not the answer. More parking is.
Many meters will limit you to two hours. Often two hours isn't enough time if you need to see a medical specialist downtown. Two hours isn't enough time to do much of anything. What if you want to do some serious shopping? Maybe you have multiple appointments?
The downtown is full of meters smart enough to take payment from a card (Lord knows a dime or even a quarter won't get you very far. Raid your kid's piggy bank for all the twoonies they've got.) If these "smart meters" are in positions that are not allowed to be parked in past a certain time, i.e. 3:30 p.m., then they should not take money or display minutes beyond that time (I found this out two weeks ago).
There simply are not enough parking spaces in the downtown.
As for what spaces there are, they aren't big enough. This is Saskatchewan. People drive pickups, crew cabs and big SUVs, not just Ford Focuses. We need bigger parking stalls pretty much everywhere. Ever try to park a Ford Expedition or F150 Supercrew downtown? Good luck.
If you need bigger spaces, you are also going to need more of them.
Parking at the Pasqua or General Hospital is next to impossible if you are from out of town. Staff and general parking are needed at both hospitals. We can't just magically get on a city bus or taxi to go to a medical appointment. It is a travesty a new office building went up at the entrance to the General instead of a parkade. They need to level an entire city block and put up parkade parking adjacent to the General. When you have to see a specialist, parking three blocks away is not much of an option (been there, done that). That's especially true if you have a HEART CONDITION and have to run to make your appointment because there was nowhere to park in a three-block radius except for the Shoppers Drug Mart on Broad. (I bought a pop there and prayed they wouldn't tow me away.)
A rebuilt Plains Health Centre, and relocation of many of the services at the Pasqua and General, would alleviate at least some of these issues.
Time to pave paradise and put up a parking lot. Make that lots of parking lots.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
