Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
While drivers in downtown St. Marys may need to drive around for a few minutes to find parking around midday during the week, a recently completed downtown parking study shows parking availability in the town’s downtown core is sufficient to meet current demand.
At the Oct. 8 town council meeting, deputy clerk Morgan Dykstra presented the results of parking surveys conducted between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. from Monday, May 27 to Saturday, June 1 earlier this year. Parking demand-duration surveys included all 208 on-street parking stalls in the downtown area and 153 parking stalls in the Elgin Street, Water Street, Jones Street and Opera House parking lots, along with an informal parking area around Well #2.
The study was meant to update the town’s data on downtown parking demand and capacity last collected through a similar study in 2021 that extended for 10 days from a Tuesday to Sunday in September from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“The current parking supply is sufficient to meet both average parking demand and the maximum parking demand,” Dykstra said. “The greatest demand on the parking system in the study was on the Wednesday at 12 p.m. when 72 per cent of all parking stalls were in use. So, 72 per cent is 259 of the 361 parking stalls.
“That means at our highest demand, there were still 101 parking stalls available for public use. What we could see trending throughout the week is parking generally starts to peak around noon and then declines throughout the afternoon. In some cases, there are street segments that have a higher rate of utilization that sometimes reach practical capacity (85 per cent or higher), those being Water Street South and Jones Street.”
According to the study results, the town’s eight downtown accessible parking stalls were never totally full during the survey period.
The surveys also showed that some drivers are parking downtown for longer than the town’s three-hour on-street parking limit. Throughout the study period, it was determined drivers of 145 different vehicles had violated the parking limit and there were 29 vehicles that had reoccurring parking infractions.
None of these infractions occurred on Queen Street, reflecting recent efforts by the St. Marys Downtown Business Improvement Area (BIA) since the previous parking study to encourage employees of businesses along that street to park elsewhere, leaving the Queen Street parking stalls open for shorter-term parking.
“There are 20 recommendations listed within the report,” Dykstra said. “They kind of fall within three categories. The first is small operational changes that we can do as the town to help mitigate any of the parking issues identified by the public, and most of that can be completed via the operational budgets. So that’s signage, adding parking stalls where we can and education.
“The second is there is one capital request which has been included in the 2025 (draft) capital budget which is to pave the gravel section of the Jones Street parking lot. Then, there’s the third type of recommendation which is ideas brought forward by staff that we believe further consideration and analysis is needed. That can be completed over the next couple years.”
Those longer-term recommendations include analyzing whether parking-permit holders should have designated parking stalls, coordinating with businesses that have onsite parking to ensure their employees are parking on private property, creating a formal municipal parking lot at Well #2, investigating longer parking limits on Jones Street South and conducting ongoing parking-study samples to ensure the accuracy of the town parking data so staff and council can be responsive to changing parking needs downtown.
“Thank you for doing this study,” Coun. Jim Craigmile said. “I can see where you’ve expanded on what we’ve done in the previous (study) from learning and gathering more information. I think that’s extremely important. One of the first things I heard you say is to let everybody know noon is a bad time (to park downtown). Try and avoid noon if you can. The next thing I think I heard you say is you’re not getting the infractions on Queen Street that you were getting, so I think (we should) let the BIA know they’re doing a great job with their employees down there. … I think everything you’ve got in here is positive. … I guess my big question is, for now, for the next four, eight, 10 years, council should be looking at … adding on parking for the future? Is that something we should have as one of our strategic priorities?”
“It is on our radar,” town clerk Jenna McCartney said. “ … By doing a summary each year, whether it’s a full study or just the five-day check-in, we’ll be able to know if the utilization has increased to a point that we now need to investigate alternative measures for parking within the downtown. We’re hoping that possibly looking to increase Jones Street South to 10 hours or eight hours – whatever we find out is needed – will take more people further out of the downtown and accommodated. As we see more people move into the downtown above businesses, if we are learning those individuals are coming with multiple cars and they are needing parking, we are going to be coming back to (council) before there is an escalated problem.”
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