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On-street parking rates are expected to increase in more than a half dozen Ottawa neighbourhoods this summer, including the ByWard Market Core, Little Italy South, the Glebe South and Downtown.
As well, Wellington Street West and Richmond Road in Wellington West, and Westboro are expected to lose their parking meter-free status.
The city’s transportation committee on Thursday voted 8-3 to approve a report recommending those changes. Full council is expected to support the report’s recommendations when it meets on July 10. The changes would come into effect in August.
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The changes to parking rates, the first in Ottawa in five years, were determined throughout the city’s 20 on-street parking zones by both inflationary pressures and measured demand for parking in each zone.
As a result, four zones will see rates go down. Rideau, Terminal and Holland Cross rates will drop from $1.50 to $1 an hour, while the rate in Vanier will decrease from $2 an hour to $1.50.
There are currently three rates for the city’s nearly 3,800 metered parking spaces: $1.50, $2 and $3.50 an hour, with about 85 per cent of them, or roughly 3,200, at the highest level. According to the city’s 2024 budget, the maximum allowable rate it can charge is $4.50 an hour. Only one of the zones — Ruskin, by The Ottawa Hospital’s General campus, where the current rate is $3.50/hour — will reach that height.
The other six zones where parking rates will increase, including Chinatown and King Edward, will see an increase from $3.50 to $4/hour, a 14 per cent jump. According to the report, the new rates are expected to generate an additional $440,000 in annual revenue each year.
Nine zones will see no change in their rates: Constellation, War Museum, Little Italy North, ByWard North/East, Glebe North, Centretown North, Centretown South, Besserer and Rochester.
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The three committee members who voted against adopting the report were Orléans East-Cumberland Coun. Matt Luloff, Osgoode Coun. George Darouze and Gloucester-Southgate Coun. Jessica Bradley.
Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper, who is not a member of the committee but whose ward is home to the West Wellington and Westboro neighbourhoods, cited retail workers’ difficulties finding parking when he asked the committee to consider delaying the approval of meters there until Stage 2 of LRT opens, expected to be in 2027.
And although his motion failed, Leiper said he would nonetheless support the report’s recommendations at full council next week.
Whether metered street parking in Kitchissippi will benefit area businesses remains to be seen. Beacon Hill-Cyrville Coun. Tim Tierney, who chairs the committee, believes it will.
“I think having parking in rotation will assist businesses,” he said. “We just heard the Trainyards … they don’t even have parking rates, and they’re going in the tank. So any assertion that those are correlated, I have a bit of a problem with.”
Tierney added on Sunday that he expects council will support the recommendations “no problem.” He noted, too, that while he’d generally like to support free parking, “when I put on my city hat, I have a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that we have equity across the board.”
“And let’s face it,” he added, “we don’t know when LRT will be ready.”
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