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Jul 01, 2023

Mayor's office pauses extension of downtown Montreal parking meter hours

The municipal parking authority apparently jumped the gun in announcing the

The municipal parking authority apparently jumped the gun in announcing the longer hours, city says.

The office of Mayor Valérie Plante has hit pause on a plan undertaken by the municipal parking authority to extend parking meter hours period in sections of the Ville-Marie borough, which includes downtown.

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The Agence de mobilité durable Montréal had jumped the gun in placing stickers announcing extended hours during which the meters would be in effect, Marikym Gaudreault, press attaché for the city's executive committee, said on Sunday. The mayor's office was unaware of the actions of the Agence, she said.

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The new stickers indicated the parking meters would be in effect weekdays from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., up from the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m hours currently in effect; Saturday hours for the meters would be 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., up from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; on Sunday, meter hours would be extended to 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. from the current 1 p.m. to to 6 p.m.

"What happened is regrettable," Sophie Mauzerolle, a Ville-Marie borough councillor and member and executive committee in charge of the Agence file, said on Sunday. "It was a silly mistake — and it caused much confusion."

In a statement on Saturday, the mayor's office said: "Our priority is economic vitality and consultation with our partners. In this case, steps were clearly skipped at the administrative level with the stickers being applied. We have asked that the operation be suspended because adjustments are needed. We will review the entire process of pricing (for meters) and communicate with our partners in good and due form."

Mauzerolle said the administration's intention had been to discuss a pilot project involving some modifications to meter hours in busy, high-traffic, areas with partners including the city's commercial development corporations, its Sociétés de développement commercial (SDCs), and merchants. The goal, as always, is to listen to their concerns and to be open to making adjustments as a consequence of those concerns, she said.

This time, the Agence acted too quickly, she said, and important steps were missed.

As soon as it learned Friday about the stickers being put up by Agence teams, the mayor's office suspended the operation, Gaudreault said. Before any changes to parking meter rates, discussions will take place with the SDCs, merchants and other partners.

These discussions will take place in the coming days, Mauzerolle said. The prime target area for modifications to parking meter tariffs is downtown and the goal is to encourage the rotation of vehicles so that parking spaces are available to the greatest number of clients, she said, with the goal of optimizing mobility as well as economic development.

The Gazette's Bill Brownstein wrote about the new stickers identifying proposed extensions to parking meter hours in his April 14 column.

Glenn Castanheira, executive director of the SDC Montréal centre-ville, said he had known nothing of the plan before learning of it from Brownstein: He was "furious," he said.

Serge Sasseville, independent city councillor for the downtown Peter-McGill district of the Ville-Marie borough, also learned about the plan from Brownstein. He said extending meter hours downtown "is definitely not the way to revitalize the area" and furthermore called the fact he had not been consulted by the city, but had learned of the plan from a journalist, "completely unacceptable."

On Friday afternoon, before the city's about-face, executive committee member Mauzerolle confirmed the changes to Brownstein and said they would take place in two weeks in sections of the Ville-Marie borough. She said she supported the changes, but the stickers had been placed on the meters precipitously because the Agence has 18,000 stickers to apply.

On Sunday, she told The Gazette: "We are putting everything on pause until talk to our partners. For now, it is status quo: no changes."

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