The Great Canadian Parking Lot Thread!

[J.OT13]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Parking garages make parking more efficient in terms of the number of vehicles a particular parcel of land can hold. But it also is much more expensive per car since multi-story parking structures are far costlier to build and maintain than surface lots. Plus they lock in the land use making it harder to redevelop the land in the future.

I think it's pretty fair to say that downtown parking is indeed "bad" even if it's tough to fully eliminate it. Space tends to be very limited in a city centre with lots of competing priorities, and cars are just not an efficient use case in such a setting. Necessary evils are still evils after all.

Parking garages sit somewhere in between surface and underground in terms of space efficiency and cost. To me, they seem to be a goldilocks solution in many cases.

As other have said, with some efforts in design and street level retail, a parking garage isn't terrible. Can be possible to convert into other uses in the future (unlike underground) or even add other uses on top.

[ssiguy]

Parking lots are indeed expensive to build but over the medium and long-term they can be tax bonanzas and help revitalize downtowns especially in mid-size cities that have paid parking and yet you can reasonable walk from one end of the downtown to the other within about 5 minutes which is most downtowns under 1 million.

By the city building low rate parking garages, they make the private sector owned parking lots unprofitable forcing them to either greatly reduce their rates or become a money pit as their revenue doesn't come close to covering the tax bill or land payments. This often forces property lot owners to sell and often at reduced prices as the scramble to get rid of the parking lot noose around their financial necks.

When they sell, the owners will not use it as another parking lot lest they too lose money but will buy with the premise of developing the land and usually residential. These new units bring in exponentially more tax revenue than when they were a parking lot...........the cost of building the parking garage is quickly paid for but the city gets a more populated and hence more vibrant downtown.

They are kind of like building arenas downtown. The land costs more than building it in the burbs and they cost a fortune a build but the vitality it brings to the downtown and the tax revenue they bring more than makes up the one-time expense.

[WhipperSnapper]

As I already said, people prefer parking in a parking lot than a parking garage. Building parking garages will not put pressure on surface parking lots. It will put pressure on rates forcing more tax dollars to subsidize the garage. I've made myself clear many times on SSP that I truly believe in Toronto that special interests are driving anti car policy for post war Toronto to be, I don't know, more Dutch and it's causing chaos for drivers and commuters alike. I also wouldn't support more money subsidizing Toronto's parking authority in order to attract stubborn auto centred suburbanites to the core

It's not a worthwhile investment for the private sector. Many cities with struggling urban cores have already built massive subsidized municipal garages over the past 30 years and they have made very little impact in revitalizing those downtowns. Visitors aren't enough. You need vibrant residents which tend to be youthful than nearing the end of their lives. The senior multi-storey clusters all over downtowns in Ontario didn't do much in establishing a local consumer population.

[Nouvellecosse]

Special interests? It depends on what one considers to be a special interest I suppose. The term usually denotes someone lobbying for their own narrow interests. For instance, people in a particular industry wanting subsides, deregulation, or tax relief for that industry. It's true that people who want to reduce car dominance in urban areas aren't the average Joe since they're typically people well versed in urban planning principles. But they're pushing for changes that have very general benefits for society rather than for them personally. Less pollution, fewer transportation fatalities, health benefits of physical activity, less drain on government spending, etc. Perhaps there are some who just want their own experience to improve but I haven't seen that.

Of course making changes in that area is difficult and disruptive. But that applies to almost any significant change as it's an aspect of change in general.

[WhipperSnapper]

That's exactly what I'm saying. I will phase it another way since there seems to be confusion. There are lobbies in Toronto that have spent many elections supporting candidates that support a sledgehammer approach to reducing auto dependency. You think that every street being reduced to one lane of traffic in either direction for bike lanes, right turn lanes at intersections over left turn lanes that allow the flow of traffic while someone waits to make a left turn or, patios erected in rush hour lanes of traffic isn't by design to create chaos and headaches for drivers? A more balanced approach takes into accounts the auto centric design of neighbourhoods while improving alternative infrastructure. Reducing lanes of traffic for transit would be far more practical than bike lanes than having a full bus sit behind someone making a left turn for an entire green light sequence while not one bike passes by.

I suppose you're perfectly fine with the sledgehammer approach to making driving so gosh darn frustrating to discourage driving given your blanket statement, "Of course making changes in that area is difficult and disruptive. But that applies to almost any significant change as it's an aspect of change in general." I don't considered causing commuter headaches as a means to achieve a narrow vision of fewer cars and buses for bikes. It's not realistic or good for the economy. Causing commuter chaos to encourage more bikes is pretty much what my councilor inferred when concerns were raised over bike lanes on a heavily used rush hour route, a bus route and, steep inclines that maybe 5% of riders will ride up. IIRC, She's now a Member of Parliament

[thebasketballgeek]

^You can’t get high bike ridership without a connected and appropriate scaled infrastructure for cyclists. Biking in Toronto on a lot of those narrow painted gutters isn’t conducive to this “sledgehammer approach” you are referring too. Especially when a lot of the Toronto bike network has missing links and abrupt ends (a symptom of automobile focused designed). It’s just a compromise that benefits no one.

Then you have streets like the Queensway where transit, cars, and cyclists are appropriately accommodated for and as a result is one of the most pleasant streets in Toronto.

It takes time, but this is the direction that major cities need to move into because of all the aforementioned benefits Nouvellecosse already mentioned.

[WhipperSnapper]

I cycle whenever my knee holds up. I'm fully aware over the disjointed cycling network. That's not a reason to dismiss the sledgehammer approach. It's actually supportive that so much quantity has been built (including on every heavily traffic route in the city) and the quality hasn't improved one bit. A balanced approach is understanding the need for transit focused corridors, rush hour traffic focused corridors, bike focused corridors and mixed traffic on wide boulevards. That's simply not under consideration or popular opinion right now although the frustration is starting to add up could result in a complete 180 in the extreme opposite direction in which bike lanes are ripped up willy nilly regardless if they make sense or not.

I agree reducing vehicular traffic should be a part of any design decision. I'm hesitant to call it an approach for the reasons that we live in populist times in which common sense is not a part of decisions. In a city like Toronto, reducing vehicular traffic is best accomplished by improving mixed traffic surface transit routes reliability and speed. I repeat again, the surface bus routes in my neighbourhood have become so unreliable by disjointed bike infrastructure that that residents have given up on them.

The Queensway is suburbia and on the wrong side to me. I seldom venture outside of the old city of Toronto and north of Bloor. IIRC, The Queensway is an extraordinarily wide street to Queen Street, Gerrard, Dundas, etc. That's one of those consideration that separate success from chaos.

[thebasketballgeek]

Those are fair points and I am inclined to agree it seems atleast in Toronto’s case their throwing a dart in the arrow and just putting bike lanes without much consideration for other modes of transport.

Also, Queensway was a typo. I mean to say Queens Quay by the harbour front. The point about street width is valid but I’m not sure if it’s much wider then Queen or Dundas. Certainly not wider then Spadina.

[WhipperSnapper]

Queens Quay is larger than the typical street in Toronto considering it had room for two lanes of traffic in each direction, dedicated left turn lanes and a raised right of way for streetcars. However, the context being right downtown, walkable to 75 million square feet of office space is much greater than street width allowing a landscaped mixed use boulevard.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by thebasketballgeek

Those are fair points and I am inclined to agree it seems atleast in Toronto’s case their throwing a dart in the arrow and just putting bike lanes without much consideration for other modes of transport.

Also, Queensway was a typo. I mean to say Queens Quay by the harbour front. The point about street width is valid but I’m not sure if it’s much wider then Queen or Dundas. Certainly not wider then Spadina.

Queen's Quay from what I recall has quite a bit larger of a right of way than Dundas, Queen, King, etc. Queen's Quay has a 27-30 metre right of way, compared to 20 metres for most other streets downtown.

The problem for most streets downtown is that they only have a 20-metre right of way, which is very narrow to try to fit all modern transport modes in with dedicated facilities. A dedicated streetcar ROW is basically impossible without banning cars entirely on the street, bike lanes would force cars into the streetcar lanes, etc..