Saskatoon's transportation committee met Monday to review a comprehensive parking strategy for the city's downtown, suggesting a need for about 1,900 more parking spaces by "building up."

"As downtown grows, we're finding it's having a difficult time growing because of the parking situation," said Alan Wallace, director of planning and development for the City of Saskatoon.

"We don't want to remove parking, so we have to do something to build parking up. It should become a vertical model and not a horizontal model."

The comprehensive look at the parking situation in Saskatoon brought up key points to the committee which included the need to build more parkades, improve the city's transit system and trim down the number of reserved parking spots to improve downtown parking.

We don't want to remove parking, so we have to do something to build parking up. - Alan Wallace

"We have a lot of parking as a total number, over 21,000 stalls, but it's not properly managed — it's an unmanaged supply," said Wallace.

Wallace said the city currently owns 23 per cent of the downtown parking with plans to expand on that number in the long term.

He said there are currently 22 sites identified as possible options for public parking downtown. However, reliance on any privately owned surface lots will stunt long term growth.

Recommendations

The report puts some strategies in place to make the downtown situation better, offering recommendations for businesses in the area to minimize or eliminate reserved parking, and to increase parking to three hours.

And for the plan to work, Wallace added that active transportation must improve as well.

"The model falls apart if you don't encourage more people to take transit. In other words, reshape the transit system along the lines of what the growth plan is calling for."

A transportation plan to double active transportation in the city will be put forth to the committee next month.