A handful of Saskatoon’s new parking pay stations were activated Thursday.
The city, beginning at 9 a.m., turned on FlexParking stations at eight blocks in the city’s downtown. Old coin meters were covered.
“Over the next couple of weeks we will be expanding the activation and we will be advising through public service announcements and social media as new areas come on stream,” said city transportation director Angela Gardiner.
The city has spent the past two months installing the solar-powered parking stations downtown, near St. Paul’s Hospital, and in the Riversdale, Broadway and Sutherland areas.
Stations on 2nd Avenue between 19th Street and 23rd Street and on 21st Street between 1st Avenue and Spadina Crescent were activated Thursday. Machines in the remaining areas will be turned on in the next few weeks, with city officials bagging old meters as the new system rolls out.
The new machines are ticketless and require drivers to enter their licence plate numbers, the city said. Parkers can pay with coins, credit card, city parking card and, soon, a cell-phone app.
“Licence plate recognition with GPS will note where all of the vehicles are and will ticket vehicles that are in a space longer than they should be,” said Andrew Hildebrandt, the city’s director of community standards.
The new system also allows drivers to move about the city on one parking purchase.
“Let’s say you are downtown and you want to move to the Broadway neighbourhood for the last hour of your parking, then you can move up there and the time transfers, so it’s quite flexible,” said Hildebrandt.
Tickets will be issued at the discretion of parking enforcers, which ensures drivers aren’t ticketed while walking to pay stations, the city said.
City officials hope all new parking stations will be activated within a month.
