Parking meters 'a huge problem' in Niagara-on-the-Lake

Not all visitors to Niagara-on-the-Lake are equipped with the tools needed to easily pay for parking in the Old Town, says Coun. Sandra O’Connor.

Late last month, council voted in favour of replacing 30 of 57 parking meters through a phased-in approach taking place over two years — with an estimated cost of $375,000 paid for through parking revenues.

In January, most machines in the area stopped accepting credit cards and are now operating on coins or through use of the Honk Mobile app, which users can download and then pay through their credit card.

A report to council on June 27 says the town’s current parking machines stopped accepting credit cards earlier this year due to aging infrastructure and new credit card payment protocols. The town’s machines, installed about 10 years ago, only have magnetic stripe readers, while newer payment protocols require chip readers and pin pads to authorize transactions.

“As a result, the town was forced to discontinue the use of credit card payments at its existing parking machines,” staff said in its report.

According to staff, the parking machine vendor provided little notice to the town about a discontinuation of the necessary parking machine hardware.

The report says the municipality investigated updating the current system with its parking machine vendor, but the vendor was “unable to update the existing parking machine equipment as they had exited this sector of the business.”

The lack of notice provided by the vendor gave the town “no time to replace the machines before the machines ceased to work for credit card payments,” reads the report to council late last month.

In May, the town relocated four parking meters that still accept credit card payments to busier and more visible locations in the Old Town. They were moved from Wellington Street, by the former hospital.

O’Connor argues that credit cards being a main option for guests to town should be a priority, and that using funds from the municipal accommodation tax to make improvements should have been considered. A motion she brought forward suggesting these steps was defeated at the June 27 council meeting.

“Knowing our demographics, I thought credit cards should also be a priority,” she said, adding that having the Honk Mobile app as the focused option for now will continue to cause problems for people such as U.S. visitors who may not have data on their phones on this side of the border.

“I think it’s a really big problem for tourists,” she said, also noting that many who make trips to town are in their senior years.

NOTL Chamber of Commerce president Minerva Ward told The Local parking has become a huge problem for the town. Her office gets “quite a lot of complaints,” she says, as do those who volunteer to greet visitors through the Ambassador program, with their kiosk set up by the Court House steps.

“We keep change in our office” for those who can’t access parking meters any other way, Ward says.

She is discussing possible solutions with the town that can be implemented now, rather than wait until new meters are installed, she says. “It’s very concerning to see people aggravated when they come to town. Our Heritage District has been rated one of the top 50 attractions to visit. People plan to come to NOTL and have a lovely day, and the first thing they’re met with is difficulty parking. I’m concerned their aggravation is going to cost us our ranking.”

In 2022, the town collected about $2.3 million in parking revenues, said staff.

More than $1.4 million of that amount was brought in through credit cards, while almost $600,000 was collected through Honk Mobile.

Slightly more than $240,000 was collected in coins from machines that accept them.

“This information demonstrates that credit card technology is still the dominant source of parking payment and a form of payment that users currently prefer,” says the report.

Toronto resident Ashley Rodriguez arrived at a municipal lot on Queen Street Monday ahead of spending a day in town.

He previously had the Honk Mobile app on his phone but had since deleted it.

“You’ve got to have a simple way of paying,” he says, attempting to redownload the app.  “It’s not very user-friendly — and it’s a deterrent.”

The town says long-term solutions will need to maintain credit cards, coins and other new payment technologies, such as Apple Pay and debit/credit tap, and look to take advantage of online payment technology.

Council has directed staff to include parking machine replacement as part of upcoming budgets, and to continue educating and guiding people toward the existing online platform, Honk Mobile.