The Parkades are Full!
Here's a new parlour game. One player goes online and told to find a letter to the editor or a Facebook post complaining about downtown Victoria. When they're ready, they place their phone face down on the table, and the other players take turns guessing what the writer was complaining about. The first player to guess correctly wins.
What's should your first guess be?
You could do a lot worse than "Parking".
Setting the Stage
People hate it when they can't park next to their destination. People will drive to the mall and spend fifteen minutes trying to find the closest spot to the entrance even when the lot is ¾ empty and an empty spot is 30 seconds farther away.
If it wasn't for hockey, finding the closest parking spot would be the national pastime.
And when people write these letters and posts, one of the common refrains is THE PARKADES ARE FULL!
So, back in June, I thought I'd find out whether they really are.
Just Scraping By
The City of Victoria has a parking page that talks about parking rates & locations, how to pay for parking, how to reserve street parking for a move, and even how to pay parking tickets online. There are links to EV Charging locations, info about accessible parking, and, for the truly dedicated, a link to the Streets & Traffic Bylaw. How lovely.
There's also a page that lets you view real-time parking availability in the parkades, and that's a lot more interesting than reading the bylaw! As I write this on a Friday night, the availability looks like this:
It was just too tempting, so I wrote a tiny service that pulls the parking availability data every hour. It's been running pretty much continuously since 1 p.m. on June 24, 2026.
The Data
So… are the parkades full?
No.
The Centennial Square parkade is full a fair bit, and the Yates Street parkade is sometimes full, particularly on weekends during the afternoon an evening. That's pretty much it.
Important Note About The Data
This is sampled data. It is not continuous. As mentioned earlier, the server pulled down the parking availability data every hour, so if the parkade became full at 2:35 p.m., and a few people left at 2:50 p.m., the data wouldn't show that at all.
Similarly, if the lot filled up at 4:55 p.m., and emptied out at 5:05 p.m. it would look like it was full for an hour, when it was really full for ten minutes.
At the same time, once someone parks, they usually stay for a while, so if the data shows that a parkade is half full, it's not likely that that 200 people suddenly appeared and then left within an hour.
Finally, when I count the number of samples, and the date of the first and last sample, I see a small difference. There are 106 days with data, but the range covers 108 days.
All in all, the data seems pretty complete, and I don't see any glaring gaps or problems.
The Whole Two-Four
Here's a graph of the number of available "general" spaces. The top line (in blue) is the total number of available general spaces across all parkades. The lines below that are colour coded and show the available spaces in each, individual, parkade.
I find this graph really hard to read, but, if you click on the image and magnify it, you can see that Centennial Square (yellow) and Yates Street (a light blue-green) are the two that fill up the most.
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| Empty General Spaces |
Median Weekday and Weekend Empty General Spaces by Hour
If you peeked at the full data, above, it's clear (and deeply unsurprising) that people use the parkades more during the day and early evening, and not so much at four in the morning.
That's not a deep insight, but it is interesting to see that different parkades show different patterns. The following two charts show the median number of available spaces in each parkade, and across all parkades, by hour. Since weekdays and weekends are obviously going to be different, they're broken out into two charts.
Here's the breakdown for weekdays:
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| Weekday Empty General Spaces by Hour |
And here's the breakdown for weekends:
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| Weekend Empty General Spaces by Hour |
One Here are my quick takeaways from this data for weekdays:
- On weekdays, Centennial Square is pretty full between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.
- On weekdays, the other parkades typically have spaces all day.
- On weekdays, there are typically over 500 available parkade spaces across all of the parkades.
The takeaways for weekends are:
- On weekends, Centennial Square gets close to full by noon, and starts emptying out by 3 p.m.
- On weekends, Yates Street starts getting full by 1 p.m. and, though it does usually have spaces, sees substantial use until around 8 p.m.
- On weekends, there are typically more than 800 available spaces across all of the parkades.
Median Weekday and Weekend Percent Full by Hour
Another, slightly different, view is what percentage of the parkades are typically in use at any given hour of the day. This is similar to the number of free spots, however:
- Some parkades are larger than others.
- How hard it is to find a spot in a parkade depends at least as much on how full that parkade is, as it does on the number of spots available.
Here's how many general purpose spots there are in each parkade:
 |
General Spaces |
Since we already know that there are lots and lots of spaces available across all the parkades, the "total" line is omitted from these charts. It just cluttered them up.
Here's the percentage break down for weekdays:
 |
Median Weekday General Percent Full by Hour |
And here's the percentage breakdown for weekends:
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| Median Weekend General Percent Full by Hour |
The overall takeaways are the same as for the number of free spots, but these charts make it clearer just how much more full the Centennial Square and Yates Street parkades get. The other parkades are almost never very full.
The new takeaway here is to go to a parkade that's not likely to be full. Of course, you can always check the city's real-time parking availability page before you leave home.
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
Here's a table of every hourly sample where a parkade was full. It's a long, skinny, image because Centennial Square is full a lot, and it will be completely unreadable until you click on it. Then it should open up and you can check the details. The yellow entries are weekdays, and the green entries are weekends.
And here is a slightly more approachable table that lists just the days in which a parkade was full:
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| Each day that a parkade was full |
The following table summarizes how many days each parkade was full during the 106 days data was being collected:
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| Days when a parkade was full out of 106 days with data |
Most of this data is pretty boring, at least to me:
- Centennial Square filled up at some point around 44% of the days, 42% of the weekdays, and 47% of the weekends.
- Yates street filled up at some point around 20% of the days, about 1% of the weekdays, and about 47% of the weekends.
The most interesting question is: why on earth did the Broughton Street (Broughton St Entrance) and the View Street parkades fill up exactly once on the same weekend day?
That day was Saturday, August 8, 2026, which was the date of the free David Foster Foundation 40th Anniversary Concert!
Thank you David. You came closer than any living person to making every Victoria driver's worst nightmare come true!
What's the Point Already?
Beyond the obvious, which was not to drive downtown on August 8, 2026, what kind of conclusions can we draw from this experiment in data scraping?
As people who read this blog know, I almost always walk or bike when I go downtown, so, as always, look at the data, at the charts, and draw your own conclusions.
With that caveat in mind, here are a few thoughts I had after looking at this data.
Leave the on-street parking for those who really need it
The data shows that there are almost always lots of parkade spots available somewhere not to far from where you're going downtown.
On the other hand, finding a street parking spot downtown is obviously harder. It's doable, but you're likely to cruise for a while. Beyond that, some people really, really need those street parking spots. Two examples are people with mobility issues, and people picking up or delivering large items. I'm sure there are more.
So why not save the hassle of on-street parking, pick a parkade with lots of empty spots (there ALWAYS is one), and get in a few steps or check out the bike share?
Use the real-time parking availability site
I used to live an hour's drive away from a big city. There were trains into the city, but no good way for me to get to one, so when we visited we'd drive. We quickly learned to reserve a spot in a parkade not too far from our destination, drive there, ditch the car, enjoy the city, pick up the car, and drive home. It just wasn't worth trying to drive in town.
Victoria is a small city, but if I was driving here for a weekend I'd still leave my car in a Robbins lot or use hotel parking.
If I was coming downtown for part of a day, I'd use the real-time parking availability page to find a parkade with lots of space and drive there. Please don't try to use the app on your phone while your driving. It's illegal and you could kill someone.
The last strategy recently got a lot easier if you're comfortable using the city's new bike share program. There are bike-share parking locations all over downtown, including near all of the parkades, and it's only going to take a few minutes to get close to your final destination by bike. For more information than you probably want, I wrote an absurdly long blog post about the bike share, which includes a bunch of hints about how to use it effectively (and cheaply).
John Ducker recently wrote an article about parking lots. One of the things he says there applies to using the city's parkades, too:
Finally and probably because I’m older, I’ve given up on the quest for the rock-star parking space. The best parking stall isn’t always the closest. A little further away means less congestion, fewer peds, easier manoeuvring and fewer dents.
In many cases you'll do better to plan your trip around a parkade with lots of empty spots.
Avoid the busy times
I don't think you could pay me to try to park at Centennial Square during its busy times.
Get the ParkVictoria App
This doesn't have anything to do with the data, but parking downtown is going to be a lot easier if you use the ParkVictoria App:
- You can extend your parking time.
- You can get refunded for unused parking time.
- If you're travelling for business, you can easily calculate your total parking payments for tax purposes.
Even better, you don't have to sit around staring blankly at a pay station while people walk by shaking their heads at your misfortune.
Consider taking transit, riding a bike, or using the new bike share
Driving a car in a city is, always has been, and always will be, a pain. This picture's caption contained some sage advice:
High summer in downtown Victoria means traffic jams, long line-ups at traffic lights, snail's-pace crawling, as tally-ho's and double-decker sight-seeking buses and air conditioned motor homes and cars demonstrate that maybe there's a lot to be said for old-fashioned walking. Problem typified in this view of Douglas from Belleville is compounded this year by closure of lower Blanshard due to the city's latest road improvement project. Perhaps next summer things will be better… but don't bet on it.
Victoria Daily Times 3 August 1974
Kudos to Lotus Johnson!
Seriously, though, for those who can take transit, walk, or ride a bike, the options have never been better. The downtown bike valet provides a safe, free, place to leave a bike. Furthermore, if you're starting your trip from within the city, you can take a bike share one way, both ways, or mix and match with transit, a taxi, or an Uber.
Just recently we spent a few days in Jordan River. I took the bike-share to Courtney and Douglas, walked a couple of metres to National Car Rental, and drove off. At the end of the trip I just flipped it around. It was an incredibly easy way to run an errand downtown.
Next steps for the city?
The real-time parking availability website, and the signs showing how many spaces are available at each parkade entrance, are recent changes and are clearly a big improvement.
Is there room for more?
Some cities have integrated with services like SpotHero that let you:
- find a parkade near your destination.
- pre-reserve a spot in the parkade.
- navigate to the parkade.
In some locations, SpotHero integrates with Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze for a more seamless experience.
In Canada, SpotHero operates in Barrie ON, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Hamilton, Kelowna BC, London, Ottawa, Regina SK, Richmond BC, Saskatoon SK, St Catharines ON, St Johns, Toronto, Vancouver, Waterloo, and Winnipeg. Some of these cities are not much bigger than Victoria, and many are smaller than the CRD.
If I lived in the West Shore and occasionally wanted to drive downtown, I think a one-stop solution like SpotHero would be a big help!
[note: there may be other options besides SpotHero. They're just the one that I know about]
References
- Parking | City of Victoria. (n.d.). City of Victoria. https://www.victoria.ca/getting-around/parking
- Streets and Traffic Bylaw | City of Victoria. (n.d.). City of Victoria. https://www.victoria.ca/city-government/bylaw-services/streets-and-traffic-bylaw
- Find Parkade Spaces | City of Victoria. (n.d.). City of Victoria. https://www.victoria.ca/getting-around/parking/find-parkade-spaces
- Wikipedia contributors. (2026, September 19). Web scraping. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping
- Wikipedia contributors. (2026b, October 9). JSON. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON
- Devlin, M. (2026, August 10). Review: Harbour concert a love letter to Victoria from David Foster and friends. Times Colonist. https://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/review-harbour-concert-a-love-letter-to-victoria-from-david-foster-and-friends-12645230
- Self signup – Robbins parking. (n.d.). https://signup.robbinsparking.com/selfsignup/parkinglocator.html?address=Victoria%2C+BC&tab=daily
- E-Bikes and bike Share | City of Victoria. (n.d.). City of Victoria. https://www.victoria.ca/getting-around/walking-riding-rolling/e-bikes-and-bike-share
- Jim Takes a Bike Share. (2026, August 29). Boomin in Victoria. Retrieved October 10, 2026, from https://www.boomin-in-victoria.ca/2026/08/jim-takes-bike-share.html
- Ducker, J. (2026, October 2). John Ducker: Patience is key to escaping parking lots unscathed. Times Colonist. https://www.timescolonist.com/driving/john-ducker-patience-is-key-to-escaping-parking-lots-unscathed-12833155
- How to pay for parking | City of Victoria. (n.d.). City of Victoria. https://www.victoria.ca/getting-around/parking/how-pay-parking
- Victoria. . .Then | Victoria Daily Times 3 August 1974 | Facebook. (n.d.). Facebook Groups. https://www.facebook.com/groups/213243315888863/permalink/2148125925733916
- SpotHero. (n.d.). SpotHero | Get Everywhere Easier | Reserve parking and save. https://spothero.com/
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