THUNDER BAY – The Lakehead Region Conservation Authority has installed new pay-and-display machines at its Mission Island Marsh and Cascades conservation areas to address issues the organization has had with people not paying for parking.
“Typically we had an honour system coin box for payment of our parking fee and over the years, that honour system, we average about two percent compliancy with visitors coming to the conservation areas,” said Ryan Mackett, communications manager.
“I think a lot of people don’t realize that the Conservation Authority is a private land owner and we don’t receive any provincial funding and very little municipal funding goes toward our conservation areas," he said. "In order to keep maintaining the areas to the level people have come to expect of us, we needed a better mechanism in place for making it as convenient and easy as possible for people to pay the parking fee."
As a non-profit organization, parking fees are a crucial source of revenue generation that fund maintenance and cleaning of the conservation areas.
“We are going to be enforcing parking, but, we are going to be doing a bit of an education phase first, so, we’re definitely going to appeal to peoples better judgment and operate under the assumption that people will come in, they’ll see our revamped signage that’s made it much more clear that there is a mandatory parking fee to pay,” said Mackett.
The new units accept coins or credit cards and the Conservation Authority is looking into upgrading them to be able to accept tap Interac payments.
There is also an option to purchase yearly Explore cards for $40 from this website, which allow visitors to park at any LRCA conservation area for a calendar after purchase.
