Paying to park: motorists to start feeding the meter Saturdays in Halifax

The days of free parking on Saturdays in Halifax are over.

Compliance officers are set to start checking for paid on-street parking in Halifax this Saturday.

“That’s not good,” says Avi Mehta, who often enjoys grabbing food with friends on a patio.

He says that now paying on Saturdays might cause him to consider other places to spend his money.

City council voted unanimously in March to add paid parking on Saturdays.

“Weekends were meant to be for free parking and if I have to pay on weekends, that’s going to upset me a bit,” Mehta says.

Most major Canadian cities have similar rules, some go even further.

In Vancouver, motorists must pay 7-days a week between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. In Toronto, payment is required around the clock every day.

Oshawa is one city where Saturday parking is still free.

“We do not have to pay for Saturday parking and it’s a wonderful thing because everyone is shopping downtown and you don’t have to pay. And they’re going to change it here?” asks Oshawa resident Valerie Levey-Paplyk.

They are, much to the dismay of the CEO the Downtown Dartmouth Business Commission.

“There’s a lot of concern,” Tim Rissesco says. “When council makes it more and more difficult for downtowns, I think it’ll be harder for the city to thrive.”

He adds that business leaders were not part of the decision-making process because if they had been, their advice would have been to keep Saturdays free.

“We’re still experiencing lower than average pedestrian counts on our sidewalks, so I think doing anything that upsets the apple cart by introducing another wrinkle like paid street parking on Saturdays could be devastating to their small businesses,” says Rissesco.

Paid on-street parking is in effect on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in select zones. The additional fees are expected to bring in nearly $2 million for the city annually.

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