Transportation: Parking
[ On-Street Parking | Tickets & Towing | Parking Lots ]
If you drive, where to park is always an issue. Like most cities, parking in downtown Victoria can be a bit of a challenge; parkades, lots and metred street parking are scarce in the city core. Be sure to have a roll of loonies ($1 coins) and quarters on hand to pay for the empty metre you find. Outside the downtown core parking is generally plentiful. Outside the downtown core, parking is generally plentiful.
In the downtown core, be careful navigating on Victoria's one-way streets
(Fort, Yates, Johnson and Pandora) to get to the desired lot.
On-Street Parking
Downtown, expect to feed the standard two hour meter. You get three minutes for 10 cents, 7.5 minutes for a quarter and 30 minutes for $1. The City of Victoria polices its street and metered parking with standard $20 parking tickets. Metres are in operation from Monday to Saturday. Also be careful not to park in rush hour zones during rush hour.
Be careful of the color of the meter!! Red means you can only park for 15 minutes.
Do not attempt to park in a tour bus loading zone, within 5 metres (yards) of a fire hydrant, alley, driveway, or intersection. You WILL be ticketed.
Tickets & Towing
If you are one of the many unfortunates to get a City of Victoria parking ticket, you have 14 days to pay until you are sent a final notice for payment which gives you another 14 days to remit payment. If your ticket remains unpaid then the city issues you a violation ticket which sets a court date scheduled approximately one month after the violation ticket has been issued.
If payment is received in City Hall within 14 calendar days the penalty is the amount indicated on the ticket
After 14 calendar days the amount is increased by $12.50
After 45 calendar days the amount is increased by $27.50
If you fail to appear in court then you are found guilty in absence and an additional fine of $20.00 is added to the outstanding ticket. You can get also arrested for "Failure to Appear in Court" at which time you will be asked to pay your outstanding fines...or else stay a while... Usually the police are quite nice and often drive you by your local friendly instant teller on the way to the police station. But even if you happen to be lucky enough to evade the police ... the city will eventually collect its dues when you go to renew your driver's license or vehicle registration. You must first pay the entire sum of your outstanding fine(s) before getting your renewal. If you get a city parking ticket, we suggest you just pay it.
Should you happen to receive a parking ticket issued by anyone of the private
parking companies around town and do not pay it in the stipulated time,
then it will most likely make its way to a city collection company (we have
yet to be contacted by anyone of these companies). If you continue to violate
the parking regulations on any of their lots then they may tow your car
to the city impound lot.
Victoria now has a website to allow you to pay your fines online.
Parking Lots
There are a lot of parking lots in downtown Victoria. Parking in Victoria comes in three flavours: surface, above ground, and underground.
There are more than 30 parking lots in Victoria. Most office buildings have downtown parking for their tenants and visitors and there are several public parkades for the public.
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