Victoria's committee of the whole has passed a motion directing city staff to explore options for another downtown parkade.
It still needs final approval at council before becoming official.
The original motion from Matt Dell and Dave Thompson specified northern downtown as the location to explore. But an amendment passed that removed that restriction and allows staff to consider any area on the outskirts of downtown.
Dell told C-FAX 1070's Al Ferraby that the motion was motivated by a recent decision to extend bus lanes on Douglas Street and make some of the existing bus lanes 24/7. "One thing we're seeing is increasing pressure for space downtown. And this happened last week with the transit priority lanes on Douglas. BC Transit said 'hey, we want 24-hour-a-day bus lanes downtown because we're moving a huge volume of people.' So we're going to lose some parking there... as we lose that space downtown, naturally we want to see if we can make up for it in other ways."
Staff will report back on options, but Dell has suggestions for what kind of opportunities might come up. "We do have some city property. The big one is the Save-on-Foods Memorial Arena parking lot. It doesn't have a parkade on it, which in other cities is a very natural spot for additional parking."
Another idea is to work with private developers, "actually working with developers when they build a building to go 'hey, can we have a floor of public parking in here?’ That's quite common in other cities and we haven't done that much in Victoria."
The motion also includes directing staff to explore reducing vehicle movements and vehicle travel in the downtown area and shift parking stalls to peripheral areas.