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Pay parking performance not what was expected

OK, they'll admit it. Pay parking isn't working like they hoped. Bob MacPherson, general manager of community life, said the municipality is seeing only 50 per cent of the revenue that had been projected for 2010.

OK, they'll admit it. Pay parking isn't working like they hoped.

Bob MacPherson, general manager of community life, said the municipality is seeing only 50 per cent of the revenue that had been projected for 2010.

"It's not the end of the world," he said. "This is hundreds of thousands in revenue the municipality did not see last year."

The RMOW is pulling in $90,000 per month in new revenue from the day lots. Through this new revenue stream, operating costs for the lots are covered and the RMOW is able to partially repay capital reserves.

However, the original intention for the parking lots was to support community transport, but there simply isn't enough money to make that happen.

MacPherson presented a slide show from Oct. 2, a beautiful Saturday afternoon when the village was packed. In the pictures, lot 1 was "well utilized." Lot 2 was "moderately utilized" with some of the spaces filled but majority were empty. Virtually no one was parked in lot 3, save for a couple of cars scattered throughout. Lot 4, which is free, was unsurprisingly jammed packed. The picture showed one car, a BMW SUV, was parked illegally to save $12 on parking.

MacPherson admitted that the municipality has brought these conditions on themselves, where one product (lots 1 through 3) is "placed too high" and the other (lots 4 and 5) is "priced too low," alluding to the fact that they may need to balance the pricing out in the future but stopping short of suggesting council add pay parking to the free lots.

"It's a matter of walking the extra minute and a half," he said. "People are very, very willing to do that."

Another problem, he said, is that the municipality hasn't done an effective job at explaining to customers the seasonal price structure. He noted that it's up to the municipality to fix all these problems, as it will not self-correct at the consumer level. For example, locals will always know where to park for free and they will, if asked by visitors, let them know where there's a better value.

"We're doing this to ourselves a little bit with the Whistler Olympic Plaza. I can see a day in the future when we have a very well balanced village with a strong attraction at the mountain end and events happening at Olympic Plaza, where this end of the village stops being so much of a back of house and really becomes a significant part of the attraction here," he said. "Putting free parking across the street from that is, um, interesting."

The pay parking at the conference centre hasn't been performing as well as expected either, which MacPherson said is likely due to visitors not aware that the parking lot exists and locals finding more convenient locations to park. Of the 40 spots set aside for monthly parking passes, only 22 have been bought up.

"We did price it extremely competitively just so people know that we're in the business. We have advertised it but it's not been the success that has been expected," MacPherson said.

There were some positives to the report, however. It indicated that the "pay by plate" system, where customers plug in their license plate numbers, is working "exceedingly well." The changes have been improved. There is also a very high level of compliance, which MacPherson said was not expected, and as a result the municipality's enforcement costs are lower than had been anticipated.

"This is supposed to be well marked," said Councillor Ted Milner. "I mean we're running a resort here and what I'm finding is that it's not well marked... We're supposed to be advising our guests and reducing the gouge factor."

Milner said that in these reports, staff is presenting nothing about the guest experience. "I'm not hearing anything about guests, all I'm hearing about is this business you're running where you're trying to raise revenue."

Milner added that when the municipality was first looking into pay parking, consultants told them that Whistler needs to offer a range of parking with a range of prices.

MacPherson said the RMOW would like to eventually get to the point where the parking lot works on a price scale, where the best spots in the lots cost more than the ones further away from the village. The problem with that at this point, he added, is that the municipality is trying to run a business and it's difficult to guide a customer to a place that costs less to park, even if it's further away, when they "need to deliver the dividend."

"This is not a sprint. It's a marathon and we're in the first kilometre at this point," MacPherson said, noting that the project will improve over the next few years.

The next steps are to improve directional signage to the conference centre parkade, which MacPherson said is the "best deal in town," and to work with Whistler Blackcomb to rationalize pricing in spring, including adjusting seasonal pricing and taking employee parking into consideration.

He added that neither the RMOW nor Whistler Blackcomb is looking to make any changes at "this point in time."