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*WmYFREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, ANIL 6,19MPAGE PAGE SEVEN This week is the beginning of a promotion by the downtown BIA of late hours openings on Thursday and Friday nights - free parking after six. There's always been free parking in the evenings but the ubiquitous parking meter remains indelibly imprinted in many people's impressions of our downtown. With dozens of malls within a couple of minutes drive where you can park for nothing, meters in the downtown area are a definite disincentive to shop there.. The argument goes that anyone who can afford to drive can easily afford to pay the dime or quarter or whatever it costs to park. But why should they? The inconvenience is far more of a problem than the expense. "Why clock watch when I don't have to?" "How long am I going to be?" "Do I put in a dime for twelve minutes and hope I get served quickly or do I put in a quarter and possibly waste fifteen cents." Even before I park - "Do I have the right change?" People just don't need or want the aggravation. Downtown Whitby has more businesses as the Oshawa Centre and is about the same size than the Oshawa Centre in terms of area. Although it doesn't have climate control, it does have a lot more character. So why don't more people shop here? It's a chicken and egg situation. Yes, there IS more selection at the OC but mainly because they do more volume - and they have more volume because they have more customers and they have more customers because they have more selection. So how does downtown Whitby break into that cycle? Certainly not by charging for parking and certainly not by having the streets patrolled by an over-zealous meterman waiting to pounce the moment the red flag pops up. Last Fall the Whitby Free Press published a survey of downtown shopping attitudes. Parking meters and especially parking tickets were the number one gripe - and this was from people who, for the most part, already shopped downtown. One obviously irate Pickering resident wrote that he would never shop here again after getting a ticket. There is also a substantial element of the population who will never pay for parking - like the real estate agents two doors up the street who park in the Free Press parking lot rather than pay a quarter for three hours only fifty feet away. They can certainly afford it. But if parking meters chase people away, is free parking the answer? That depends. Paid parking does accomplish one thing - it ensures that there is a constant turnover in parked vehicles, it ensures that someone doesn't park in front of your store and stay there all day. We have commuters who park on the side streets and catch the bus into Toronto - we certainly don't need them on Brock and Dundas. And we certainly need to educate the merchants who parked themselves in front of their own businesses all day when parking was made free a couple of Christmases ago. The risk of free parking is that all the convenient spaces will be used up before the shoppers ever arrive. Monitoring may be just as important when it's free as when it's paid. The development of suburban shopping malls (and downtown malls as well) roughly coincided with the introduction of large numbers of parking meters in the fifties. Developers gambled that an abundant supply of free parking would attract customers. They seem tW have been right. The Oshawa Centre, for instance, has more than 5,000 parking spaces and at times they're all full. A lot of sales are generated by that kind of traffic - way more than enough tW justify the cost of the free parking. In fact the only commercial areas with paid patking which continue tW prosper to the extent of the suburban malls are areas like downtown Toronto or Yorkville which have convenient and abundant transit and offer unique shopping environments. Parking in downtown is no small enterprise. Revenues this year are expected t ebe over $200,000 - 20% of that from fines (which says something about how eager we are tW feed the little devils.) This revenue is all put back into parking in one form or another (including the guy who writes the tickets) so that the parking system is self-supporting. The system includes a huge capital investment (the 45 new meters being put on Byron and Centre Streets this year will cost $31,500) which can't simply be abandoned. Yet to pretend that parking meters do not deter shoppers is ridiculous. If paid parking were removed, the cost of parking lot maintenance and monitoring would have to come from other sources but the increase in business would more than cover it. As a start why not partially remove the meters. Perhaps the off-street parking lots should be free while street parking would still cost money. Gradually, as meters wore out, parking could be removed entirely fromi the major streets in favor of wider sidewalks, more trees, sidewalk cafes, and lots of people shop- ping. Traffic would run smoother - unhassled by cars pulling in and out of parking places. The hundreds of thousands of cars travelling north to Cullen Gardens would see a vibrant active downtown. They would see the interesting buildings between the trees instead of the parked cars. 0f course we would have to build more parking to accommodate ail the new business. I l I iMm, WHITBY DUNLOPS, WORLD AMATEUR HOCKEY CHAMPIONS, APRIL 1, 1958 Thirty years ago the Whitby Dunlops posed for this picture after winning the World Hockey Championship at Oslo, Norway, by defeating the Russians 4-2. At far right in the front row is Bob Attersley, Mayor of Whitby in 1988, who scored the winning goal. Whitby Archives photo 10 YEARS AGO from the Wednesday, April 5, 1978 edition of the WHITBY FREE PRESS • A legacy of $175,000 from the late Bessie Farewell of Oshawa will be used to improve Fairview Lodge. • Durham Region Council has awarded a contract for $6.5 million to expand the Corbett Creek Sewage Treatment Plant. • Regional taxes will increase by 3.9 per cent in 1978. Current and capital budgets amount to $46 million. • The West Lynde Social Club has been formed to raise money for children's organizations. 25 YEARS AGO from the Thursday, April 4, 1963 edition of the WHITBY WEEKLY NEWS • Charles Stafford and Fred Twist are being honored for eight and 16 years of service on the Whitby Planning Board. • Six rooms of an addition to Anderson High School will be ready for use after the Easter Holidays. • Douglas Long, 18, a Grade 13 students at Anderson High School, has won the impromptu section of the provincial semi-finals of a public speaking contest. • Mr. and Mrs. John McMinn celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on March 31. 100 YEARS AGO from the Friday April 6, 1888 edition of the WHITBY CHRONICLE • The Ontario Minister of Education reports that Whitby is the only town in Ontario with a child under the age of five attending school. • The Whitby and Pickering St. Andrew's Society has opened a new hall above Andrew M. Ross's dry goods store. • Councillor Fred Howard Annes wants the Town of Whitby to drill for natural gas with assistance from the federal government. • Thomas Allan Fisher has resigned as postmaster at Ashburn. 1 2