The Parking in Your Town Series: 1. On-street Management
![]() We have written 4 articles on the very exciting subject of Parking. These are our "Parking in Your Town" series. In them we explore On street parking, Off street Minima, The idea of the Parking Benefit Neighbourhood or PBN and finally, the idea of a Verge zone. Below is the first one with more to come soon. The Parking in Your Town Series:
This is Part 1 of a four-part series about parking and its effects on development and municipal government finance. We know…Boring! But wait—this affects people every day, in business and in their personal lives as well as the fiscal reality in which their municipalities exist. So, let’s dive in! As our society emerges from the COVID-19 crisis, one thing is becoming very apparent: local governments (the ones who look after local roads, sewage & water systems, garbage pickup and parks) are feeling the financial toll from the pandemic. As we transition from dealing to recovering, we are going to have to really examine what parts of the old system are worth keeping and what parts are simply going to act as drags on our financial recovery. If we look at our cities and towns for the low-hanging fruit that can put us back into a positive financial picture, we don’t have to look very far to see that non-commercial parking can be a real opportunity for our cities and towns to be great places. Parking for motor vehicles plays a very large role in housing supply, land and energy use, climate change, place making and transportation. The Opportunity It all starts with good intentions. Historically, local governments the world over faced several challenges from cars as a new technology. The enforcement, parking meters, licence plate reading cameras, payment apps, cell phones and tow trucks of today didn’t exist. With early drivers parking on sidewalks and double parking, traffic became congested. There had to be a solution to the madness—and as different parts of the world dealt with these problems in different ways, we tried to increase the supply by any means necessary. We have been increasing the supply for nearly 80 years and there is still ‘not enough parking’, a phrase that is repeated ad nauseum. Therefore, it’s no surprise that some folks view the current discourse around on street parking in North America as dysfunctional. Why would people criticize the amount of parking available on our streets? After all, parking is free on many parts of Vancouver Island and is abundant. However, the folks that openly criticize this and many others argue that the discourse is dysfunctional because local governments have contributed to the unnatural large supply of parking that has many practical implications for how people use space, both on street and off street. Local governments have contributed to the land use management challenges in two major ways: having minimum parking requirements for off-street developments [see Part 2: Off-street Minima] and actively working to provide a supply of on-street parking. Supplying on-street parking does the following: 1.It makes the street very wide.
2. Not pricing on-street parking does the following:
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