Upgrades needed to downtown parking garages

By Dave Flaherty/The Oshawa Express

Four of Oshawa’s downtown parking facilities could be getting a major facelift.

Council has approved a staff recommendation to replace the access equipment, pay stations, revenue control software and transponders used at the four locations.

The total cost of the overhaul is estimated at $650,000.

The facilities included in the project are the parking garages on Centre Street, McMillan Avenue, Mary Street and the parking lot at the Oshawa courthouse.

The city previously set aside $180,000 to replace the transponder reader equipment at the four locations in the 2017 capital budget.

At that time, the equipment used was no longer in production, and in the event the equipment failed, the city wouldn’t have been able to repair or replace it.

However, according to a staff report delivered at the latest community services committee meeting, spare equipment became available and the replacement became less urgent.

Two years later, staff says the parking access and revenue control system has reached its 10th year in operation and the system is beginning to fail at an increased rate.

The communication equipment at the exit and entry points is also unreliable, which has led employees to have to provide access to customers by manually operating the barrier, resulting in lost revenue and impractical use of staff time.

The software used to manage the system is also out of date and requires considerable support from the city’s information and technology department at the cost of approximately $100,000 per year for a contracted position.

With these issues in mind, staff advises tackling the project all at once.

An additional $470,000, on top of the money set aside in the 2017 budget, will be considered for this year’s capital budget.

Should the project move forward, the city will begin the RFP procurement process sometime this year.