Call it a problem or a transition.

Regardless, for at least one city manager, dealing with the downtown parking plan is a chance for new innovative ideas to take shape as the city's downtown makes a big transition.

"It's a good opportunity,” Shannon Clohosey, the city's sustainability projects manager, said at a Wednesday meeting of council and senior management focused on the downtown parking study currently underway.

The meeting was one of several that Boulevard Group, the Victoria firm contracted to do the study, is having this week as it wraps up the consultation portion of the project.

Further gatherings followed yesterday afternoon with the parking committee, last night with the general public, and this morning with downtown businesses. Another is scheduled for late this afternoon with employers and employees of the downtown core.

Boulevard community planner Daniel Casey went over the results of parking information it collected, a questionnaire and comments made at a public meeting held in May to kick off the study.

After that, Todd Litman, a parking specialist who founded the Victoria Transport Policy Institute and who's in town for the meetings, pointed out the city seems to be in a transition.

It's going from a time where parking has essentially been readily available for free in many parts of the downtown core to now, where the city has grown to a point that further parking management measures have to be put in place.

Right now, he said, the city is dealing with a situation where many people are of the mindset that parking should be free of charge.

"It's a complete philosophical transition,” Coun. Ranj Pillai agreed.

Demand for more parking is creating the need to better manage it, and there are many ways to do so, city staff and council members at the meeting heard. Those on hand included Councillors Dave Stockdale, Pillai, Doug Graham, Dave Austin and Betty Irwin.

"If you want to encourage alternative transportation, (a) parking management plan is the most important component of that,” Litman said.

If a parking management plan is done right, it can encourage downtown business, fit into climate change efforts, generate sustainable growth and provide health benefits to the community, he said.

The city should think of the parking initiative as a solution and part of the overall strategic plan, he added.

It's important not to get caught up in thinking of it just as a parking issue, he said.

Contracted specifically to look at the parking matter though, Casey said the information and comments Boulevard has been collecting since May show that the major challenges for parking occur closest to Main Street.

That artery had an 80 per cent occupancy rate in parking between First and Fourth avenues from noon until 4 p.m. when Boulevard did a survey of vehicles on May 13.

"Main Street is where the issue's being felt,” Casey said.

The information was collected throughout the downtown core for one day to give Boulevard a sense of the parking situation.

A questionnaire and meetings also gave officials further insight into the parking situation in the city's core.

Through those, they learned while Main Street and First Avenue are the most difficult places to find parking, the periphery of the busiest sites – Jarvis and Strickland Streets – are the easiest areas to find parking.

Most who filled out the questionnaire – 58 per cent of the 336 – travel into the downtown do so alone by vehicle.

Just how far those people are willing to walk to get to their downtown destinations is often dependent on why they're in the neighbourhood.

Those coming downtown for work, who will be in the neighbourhood for an eight-hour shift, for example, are more willing to walk from a 300-metre radius than those who are there just to pop into a store for a minute.

In the core areas, there are a lot more short-term parkers, Casey said.

He later noted though that offices generate about half the parking downtown demand, with retail making up about a quarter.

Restaurants, residences and some other uses are among the remainder of the parking needs downtown.

That means, Casey said, there's a significant demand for parking during the daytime hours with offices operating between about 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. and most retail shops open about the same hours or until 6 p.m.

As Pillai pointed out there doesn't seem to be any perceived problem after 6 p.m., and it's not hard to find a parking spot on Main Street in the evenings.

Many at the May meeting questioned the timing of the city's parking study, given that it's also looking at selling off its parking lot at Third Avenue and Strickland Street to private developers who would build a multi-level parkade with at least 100 stalls.

However, as Litman noted, the increase from about 60 stalls on the lot now to even 120 stalls wouldn't make a lot of difference in the overall parking situation downtown.

Others wondered about city regulations for businesses to provide off-street parking, providing cash-in-lieu of parking spots, parking management strategies and options for people with disabilities.

Over the summer, Boulevard will be looking at all those issues and any final matters that are brought forward as it wraps up the public consultation face of the project.

A video-conference between with Boulevard and city officials may be held sometime in July as an update prior to the plan coming back to council in September.