EDITORIAL – New crop of downtown parking kiosks will be big improvement

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

‘FREE AT LAST’ might be the cry of downtown drivers, shouted from the mountain tops, when the last of the current parking kiosks hits the junk heap.

It’s been 12 years since Kamloops coin-operated meters were replaced with the kiosks that require you to get down on your hands and knees to read. Then, squinting at the unreadable screen, you have to figure out how to make it work. Just think of the struggle that unsuspecting visitors have to go through.

But that’s going to change this year when the City replaces those awful kiosks with new ones, and the new ones promise to be much better. For one thing, they’ll be simpler and much easier to read.

The City held a couple of open houses this week in which people could check out the two short-listed possibilities. One was at the McArthur Island Sports and Events Centre, which I attended last night.

There was a pretty good crowd of the curious in attendance. We got to try out the two machines for comparison. One of them is quite a bit taller than the other, so the screen is slightly higher up. It’s also a touch screen, as opposed to physical buttons on the other. I found the touch screen more intuitive and easier to use.

About a half dozen machines from various vendors were examined by City staff before they were narrowed to two based on a bunch of criteria including security features, ease of use and so on. Either one of them will be a blessing after a dozen years of swearing at the ones currently planted in the main downtown parking zones.

A lot of details — including such things as cost per machine and control over the software — on the new ones remain confidential for proprietary reasons and won’t be available until after an RFP goes out. The decision on which one to pick will be made in a few months.

And, of course, there’s the matter of parking rates. Fees are going to go up substantially (possibly to $2 an hour for two hours  and $4 for the third hour on Victoria Street), and people won’t like that. But the new kiosks will remove some of the pain.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.