Why Parking in Salmon Arm Is So Confusing

Life is full of change. Seasons change, friends move away, loved ones die, your credit card expires. But in this sleepy little slice of British Columbia, there is one thing that will never change.

People whining about parking in Salmon Arm.

Think about it, you’ve heard someone say at least three of the following statements in the last month:

• “There isn’t enough parking downtown”
• “We need more free lots”
• “The paid lots are too expensive”
• “The wait list for the reserved lots is a year”
• “There is so much empty land around, why don’t they add more free parking?”
• “We need a four-level parking garage”
• “Street parking in this town is the worst”
• “I have to move my car every 2 hours”
• "Why do we need so many EV chargers?"
• “Every single free spot downtown should be only for people who work downtown. If you don’t work downtown, you should have to pay”
• “The city makes it too confusing to pay your ticket”
• “Look at this photo I took of a car that parked half an inch outside the lines, learn to drive, idiot!”

I could go on, but I’ll stop there.

It’s one thing to have these thoughts, but it seems everyone is under the impression that they are obligated to share these thoughts with the world every chance they get.

If we don’t stop talking about this soon, our babies' first words are going to start being “parking” or “city council” or “Bill Laird.”

By the way, think carefully if you really want to keep bugging our city council with these parking complaints. They could always make it worse. You should never underestimate someone's potential for incompetence.

As a quick example, in the 2022 municipal election, a candidate proposed a truly silly solution to fix parking in the downtown. They wanted to build parking lots uptown where you park your car, hop on a shuttle that drops you downtown so you can do all your shopping, and then catch the next shuttle back up to your car, like we’re all geriatric seniors going for our weekly outing on the Handydart.

Oh yeah, that would have worked well. It definitely wouldn’t have resulted in most people still parking downtown and now complaining about the amount of empty shuttles clogging up Ross Street.

Why would I want to take a 5-minute trip to Pharmasave when I could drive uptown, park my car, stand outside waiting for a shuttle, take the 5-minute trip downtown, walk from the drop-off point to Pharmasave, then wait 15 minutes for the next shuttle back up so I can walk back to my car and drive home?

My 5-minute errand turned into half an hour, but hey, at least there’s one less car on the road.

Or better yet, imagine the senior citizen who makes their weekly trip to Askews, the Post Office, and the Candy Vault. They’re not allowed to drive between those spots anymore - gotta hoof it and carry all their items with them.

And what about all the people that love to drive drunk or high around downtown, what are we supposed to tell them?!

This candidate never got elected, thank goodness. They better not be parking downtown though, or else I want them kicked out of the city.

Back to the main topic.

I have no issue with people complaining about parking, it’s your right — no — it’s your duty.

But I think we’re complaining about the wrong aspect of this issue. The real issue with parking is the signage.

I’m not saying any of the other arguments are necessarily invalid, but we need to get the signage clear so we actually know what we are mad about.

I took a ten-minute walk around the downtown core and took photos of the various parking signage. Take a look at the image gallery below.

As you can see, they vary wildly both in design and in messaging. It looks like half the signs are leftovers from the 70s and the other half were updated by a graphic designer whom the city only paid enough money for half of a rebrand.

There are about 6 different colour palettes, 5 different fonts, and there are even 2 different official Salmon Arm logos on these signs.

And then when it comes to the messaging on these signs, they are giving way too many options:

• Free lot
• Reserved lot
• Permit-only lot
• Pre-paid monthly lot
• Call the City to inquire
• Call a private number to inquire
• Some lots have ticket dispensers — most don’t
• One stretch of angled street parking does have a dispenser
• Max 2 hours
• Max 10 hours
• $1 per hour
• Monday–Friday
• Monday–Saturday
• Occasionally, there's a QR code… for something?

Now some of these photos might be privately owned lots, not city-owned lots, and you were about to button-mash your keyboard to call me out in the comments.

But that’s exactly my point.

It’s so unclear. Some of these signs indicate that they are city-owned, others don’t, but they also don’t indicate that they are definitely NOT city lots.

I’d like to quickly highlight one of the best paid lots in the city, by the way.

Who wouldn’t want to pay a monthly fee to park your car in a mud puddle inside an abandoned shell of a building?

Annoyingly for me, but ironic to no end, I actually got a parking ticket while writing this blog post. As if this fire needed more fuel...

Walking back to my car, I saw tickets on three other vehicles as well, which tells me that one of the newly hired college students must be trying to make a good impression and hit their quota today.

I cannot imagine what kind of person wants that job. Their mission is to go around literally ruining people's day, one ticket after another. There's nothing redeeming about this profession. They can never lay their head down on their pillow at night and reflect on how they helped someone that day, or made the world a better place. Even the Walmart greeters can at claim that they are making the world a better place in some way, but our seasonally employed ticket dispensers? Not so much.

Can't we just relax and let people park however long they want? What's the worst that could happen? Seriously, what is the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen? We should at least just try it and see if a problem develops before slapping yellow papers on everyone's windshield.

Salmon Arm has around 20,000 people. Let's assume 2,000 tickets are given out in a year. Tickets are $25 if paid within two business days, and after that it goes up to $50. That works out to $50,000-$100,000 in revenue for the city. Based on the revenue reported by the city for "Licences, Permits and Fines", that number doesn't seem impossible. Revenue for that category in 2023 was $941,083, and I think it's totally reasonable to assume at least $50,000 came from parking tickets. That's only 5.3%.

Here's a fun way to think about it. The college kids giving out the parking tickets this summer could very well be getting paid $50,000 collectively which means it's technically possible that the city generates $50,000 in parking ticket revenue and uses it to pay the people giving out the tickets. That would mean it cancels itself out and there is no positive outcome from giving out these parking tickets. It's just the public paying someone's wage to give out the tickets that pay their wage to give out tickets to pay their wage to give out tickets to pay their wage.

Okay, I know that there are about a million other factors that go into this and that my made up scenario is almost completely incorrect. But it's technically possible, and it's definitely funny.

All that being said, we need to rein in these trigger happy parking police. Holster those yellow sticky notes and become a real bylaw officer so you can go bust someone who built a garden shed six inches too close to the property line. You know, a real problem.

Now that I've complained about a $25 ticket, let's get back to main issue with our city's parking. My point here is that the city should prioritize standardizing all of their parking signs to be clear and obvious.

That’s step one.

Once the signs all look and read the same, then they can implement a set of rules that works for all those lots. Standardize the hours, the rates, and for heaven’s sake, please join the modern world and put payment for everything on an app.

I shouldn’t have to go to city hall in person with a money order and my best livestock to pay my parking ticket.

By the way, if you scan the QR code on the Ross Street parking lot sign, you get taken to this web page. Seriously, this needs to be simplified.

As a final step of my parking adventure and to help me understand Salmon Arm’s parking rules better, I sent photos of these signs and that city webpage from the QR code to a Data Scientist, a Pattern Recognition Specialist, and a Cryptographer.

All three of them are now in an insane asylum.

I'm convinced the city is intentionally making the parking as confusing as they can to maximize ticketing opportunities and therefore profits. You thought you parked in a safe area because there were no signs? Well you should have read the entire city website to double check. Obviously.

The bottom line here is that the city needs to have one consistent approach to parking signs, that way we can at least know what we’re mad about.

Until then, we’re all just complaining about something that is maybe, possibly, potentially a problem, but who knows.

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