parking

More buildings in Toronto are being built with less car parking, and most are finding that they just don't need it. The mainstream media highlighted a new condo no car parking on the site of the Royal Canadian Military Institute. The developer needed to get a special exemption from the city even as the city's planners opposed it. It's not the first development with little to no parking in Toronto. The Wychwood Barns were rebuilt with no extra parking. The Brick Works is being rebuilt with less parking. Can they still be successful with so little parking? Will they be even more successful?

When the opportunity to develop 426 University Ave. first crossed Stephen Deveaux’s desk, he quickly realized the 38 x 16 metre site didn’t even have enough space to accommodate a proper ramp for an underground parking garage.

“Most developers would look at the site that had a challenge like this and say: ‘We’re going to pass,’ ” says Deveaux, vice-president of land development for Pickering-based Tribute Communities. “We looked at it as an opportunity to do something new and different and progressive.”

Granted, it was also an opportunity to save a little coin. It costs about $27,000 to build a single underground parking space in Toronto.

A proposed downtown condo will have absolutely no parking for private motor vehicles, if City Council approves it. Instead it will only have spots for car-sharing vehicles and 315 bike parking spots. The innovative project, which will be built on University Avenue at the site of the Royal Canadian Military Institute, is going one up on the new draft parking by-law which will reduce the number of required parking spots for residences, stores and offices.

The East-York / Toronto Community Council overruled City staff, which insisted that the project goes against expertise and experience. It's uncertain what kind of expertise they are drawing on when downtown developers insist that the majority of condos downtown sell without parking:

"If you look at the evidence of what sells downtown, the majority of units under 750 square feet in the downtown core sell without parking,'' said Stephen Deveaux, a vice-president with the developer, Tribute Communities. Parking spots typically add $20,000 or more to the cost of a downtown condo.

It will be interesting to see if the market is strong for no car parking or if the staff are correct that it is still a necessity. The staff's position:

Normally, building plans follow a formula for how much parking space should be allowed; current standards, if applied to the building, would provide approximately 140 parking spaces for residents.

"To assume a residential development of the project's scale might be totally car-free runs counter to expert study and experience," the staff report stated. "Although there are many households in the downtown (area) without cars, it would be highly unlikely to find 315 of them permanently concentrated in one building."

It also stated that, "exempting the project from the city's parking standards would create a negative precedent that undermines the integrity of the parking provisions of the zoning bylaw."

Annette St.: All plugged up
A few days ago, the Toronto Star's fixer got excited about getting the Annette St. "No Stopping" signs added next to the new bike lanes. Cyclists everywhere rejoiced, and all was good.

However, upon further inspection, not all of Annette Street's signs have been updated, so in many sections motorists still feel they have the right to park in the bike lanes. And although other sections of Annette St. have the proper signage installed, motorists continue to park wherever they darn well feel like it.

Ah, but we have parking enforcement officers! They will help!

To be honest, I lost my faith in the police and parking enforcement when it comes to enforcing bike lane parking violations a long time ago. I have seen PEOs and police officers cruise right past bike lane parkers without blinking. I have even spoken directly to officers and pointed out illegal bike lane parkers, but they usually come up with excuses for the motorist.

So, as a final nail in the coffin, I present you with these photos of a City of Toronto Parking Enforcement vehicle parked in....you guessed it....the bike lane. The officer was not in the vehicle, nor anywhere that I could see on the street. It looks like the officer was probably popping in to one of the local businesses for a quick breakfast or coffee, while blocking a lane of traffic.

According to the National Post and this Dundas West BIA poster, Councillor Giambrone is looking into banning rush hour parking from both sides of Dundas West in order to make streetcars run faster.

The BIA claims that there will be an April 29 City Council vote on removing rush hour parking on both sides of Dundas street. It goes on to argue that "This will turn our streets into dangerous highways, hurting pedestrians, cyclists and small businesses."

I really wish BIA's would actually do some research or consult cyclists and pedestrians before declaring the danger of whatever the city wants to change. I'd find it hard to believe if the BIA has any experience biking on Dundas West. After much biking along its narrow curb lanes, squeezed between streetcar tracks and badly parked vehicles I'd say I'd much prefer to zip alongside moving traffic rather than be constantly afraid that I'll get doored.

But then the Dundas West BIA has a history of trying to get more car parking in the area. Since 2006 they've been lobbying community council to allow for off-side rush hour parking on Dundas West. In 2008 Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone supported the initiative on Dundas West to Bathurst.

It's all spin. All along this was about increasing car parking on the major streets, rather than worrying about the dangerous nature of traffic to pedestrians and cyclists.

Seeing some of the commentary on my first post, I decided that it would be helpful to show you just how the street in question is laid out.

Street with markings.: Satellite image from Google.

[Editors: We'd like to welcome Kris as a guest blogger who in his first segment is going to document his pursuit of bike parking. Kris is a long term organizer of Critical Ass and a ward captain in the bike union.]

Bike parking on College.: (Wikimedia/Xavier Snelgrove)

I've never been one to shy away from a good challenge. Really. One of the challenges I'm looking at right now is to get the city to install some bike parking in an odd little corner of the city. One of those unique little places that it would be completely impractical to accomodate in any official policies or guidelines as an exception to the general principles (because you'd have to list it, and all the others not quite like it, one at a time).

As far as I can tell, the place where I want to get some bike parking isn't a bad place to have it. It's just going to be politically inconvenient to get it installed. I expect the city staff to be busy enough with other things that I'll have to shoulder a good deal of the inconvenience myself.

So that's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to write about it here. That way, when you want to get some bike parking installed, you can take a look at your situation, figure that it isn't any worse than this one, and be able to refer back here as a guide if you need it.