Oh, Hello Vancouver
We’re excited to be live in our first Canadian city and tenth city to date, Vancouver! Launching in this beautiful B.C. city nearly completes our West Coast trek where we tagged over 723 spots and nearly 20 businesses.
Vancouver, like its Pacific NW cousins of Seattle & Portland, is beginning to build build a motorbike parking infrastructure to make riding, tourism and commuting easier in the city.
Vancouver’s metered parking is set up in zones as opposed to individual stalls like Seattle. Each zone has the capacity for as many bikes that can be stuffed in them; typically four to six max within a painted box. Although pricey in many areas, each zone has one meter that needs to be paid during meter hours which are 9am-10pm city wide. This creates a unique honor system among parkers where no one person is responsible for paying the meter, but the meter must be paid to avoid violations being issued. While we appreciate the community-building, pay-it-forwardness this creates, it is confusing when determining who is going to maker sure the meter is paid up.
There are about as many free parking zones in Vancouver as there are metered ones which sometimes located just down the street or around the corner from metered spots. However most, as expected, are not in the city center. These free parking zones are found to have both painted and unpainted boundaries, but do have signage denoting where to park. Free parking zones make up roughly half of the city’s availability with over 350 spots.
Besides the confusing meter situation, Vancouver appears to be heading in the right direction in creating parking for motorbikes with high saturation in both the city center and surrounding areas. For more clarification on how parking for motorbike works in Vancouver, see our friend’s at MCParking website mcparking.ca. They have a TON of information on how to park smarter in the city.
For more information check these resources:
vancouver.ca/streets-transportation/motorcycles-and-scooters
vancouver.ca/streets-transportation/pay-for-parking