Parking in short supply on busy Banff weekend

With plenty of visitors descending on Banff this weekend, parking was in short supply.

"Lots of customers say they don't have space for parking," said Zeny Tagudar, who runs Scallywags toy store. "I think they have to open up more parking lots."

The townsite has been struggling with parking issues for years and the surrounding park has been inundated with visitors, which led to some being turned away from Lake Louise earlier this summer. 

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Shafiq Jetha was one of many visitors that eventually found parking in Banff on Monday.

"There's always going to be a parking problem somewhere like this," he said. "It's a tourist hotspot."

But he said more options for visitors, like park-and-ride services, would be better than building more parking lots.

"You don't want to obscure the beauty. You don't want to put parkades everywhere and ruin it," he said. 

Park and walk

Martha Birkett, who owns Amaryllis Crystal Garden, said there are options as long as people are willing to get off the main drag. 

"It can be pretty tricky, quite honestly," she said. "When I come in I will typically try to go further away, down by the river if I can find a spot there and walk."

She said there are plenty of places with free parking and that "there's just so much more in the nooks and crannies that people don't see."

In Lake Louise, shuttles are being used to reduce some of the traffic congestion between the town and the lake. 

In Banff, visitors can use the town's website, banffparking.ca, to get real time information on where to find available spaces. 

The town also has signage urging people to take advantage of free parking further out of the townsite.

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