And it’s beginning to look like Rob-Ford-lite: protect and defend motor vehicle operators. In this new policy announcement, Mr. LaPointe focusses on improving life for motorists.
Reporting on yesterday’s NPA press conference: The Vancouver Sun (Jeff Lee):
But on Wednesday Vancouverites began to see a little more clearly what Vision and the NPA consider are important planks in their respective platforms. . . . The NPA’s free parking plan, which includes carving back paid meter evening hours throughout the city to 8 p.m. from 10 p.m., came as LaPointe used words like “roll back” and “gouge” to describe what he said was Vision’s constant attack on motorists.
The Globe and Mail (Frances Bula):
In contrast, Mr. LaPointe accused Vision of being anti-business and anti-motorist as he promised free parking on Sundays, evenings and holidays outside the downtown. “In the six years it’s been in power, [Vision’s] done nothing for the motor vehicle except to gouge the motorist,” he said. He added that providing free parking at least on Sundays and in the evenings helps support the city’s many small businesses.
Anyone who engages merchants at all know they would welcome this kind of move, which I view as intended – to help storefront businesses. Other beneficiaries include arts venues and even visitors to downtown residents. Or even those who visit someone in the hospital in the evening, with fear of being towed, as at present. (I know this last one too well.)
Please demonstrate a link between free parking and benefits to storefront businesses and arts venues, other than the gut feeling of their owners. It seems to me that free parking leads to unavailable parking, which doesn’t help those businesses and arts venues very much at all.
As far as visiting people at the hospital without fear of being towed, you have many options, including public transit, walking, biking, or paying for parking. If these options are not adequate, we should advocate (and many people are) for them to be improved. Free parking only means that someone else will likely have taken that spot when you want it.
The City of Vancouver has several transportation options, each with an associated set of costs. It just so happens that one of the costs of operating a motor vehicle is paying to park it somewhere. No one complains when the taxi driver charges you for the distance travelled. No one complains when Translink asks you to pay a fare to board a bus. No one complains when they have to use their legs to walk.
Do you drive a car and park it places? Expect to pay. I don’t get why this is so hard to understand.
You’ve identified the costs, I’ve identified the intended benefits of free night and weekend parking. Let the debate begin.
It worked extremely well for Rob Ford, and he had a lot of unrelated flaws. Maybe it’ll be a close race in Vancouver. I’ve always wondered if Vancouverites really supported all the urbanism and cycling that we readers here keep ourselves involved in. Maybe this election will give us some data points.
Free parking will hurt small businesses in that it will be harder for their customers to find parking. Most of the spaces will be taken by employees and residents, not customers. Appropriate meter rates ensure turnover so that customers can actually find a spot. The city’s meter rates are set to target a certain level of occupancy, but these rates are generally fixed throughout the day and are adjusted infrequently. The NPA should be advocating for smarter meter pricing, even real-time based on demand.
I absolutely agree with Agustin and S – I’d far rather pay a few to several bucks an hour and have a decent chance of finding a parking spot than not finding any parking spot at all. I really think this is a very short-sighted policy.
Apparently there are motorists who cannot bring themselves to park in a parking lot. And store owners who insist Vancouver is a big strip mall, and all customers arrive by car and insist on parking at the curb right in front of the store. Live long and prosper, I say. You are made for each other and long may your politicians thrive.
Well, here is a broad and smart concept for managing curbside parking places. Smart, real-time pricing based on occupancy, with online by-the-spot availability to cut down on the traffic that circles and circles, searching for that curbside spot.
http://sfpark.org/how-it-works/
“SFpark charges the lowest possible hourly rate to achieve the right level of parking availability. In areas and at times where it is difficult to find a parking space, rates will increase incrementally until at least one space is available on each block most of the time. In areas where open parking spaces are plentiful, rates will decrease until some of the empty spaces fill.”
All – just what would a pro-business lens do to your outlook on this particular subject, which is late night and weekend parking ONLY? With time limits if necessary, in a particular situation. Variable parking rates do make a lot of sense the rest of the high demand times. No problem with the concept.
Who among us is against business, Frank? Seems like a straw man to me.
If you can come up with a logical, demonstrable argument for free parking, let’s hear it.
At night and on weekends only, not all the time. Please avoid your own straw man, Augustin.
Settle down Frank, he’s just asking for some evidence which have not been able to produce. How someone in a big city like Vancouver should expect to drive into town and find a parking spot directly in front of a shop they are going to patronize is a ridiculous expectation.
No problem, you can make your argument for free parking at night and on weekends only.
Frank Ducote – you’re making a strange assumption that all the other commentators aren’t thinking in a pro-business lens, when in fact almost all of them have enumerated how free parking can hurt businesses. If all the parking spaces are full – and if they’re free, they most likely will be full – then people can’t park to go shopping, and business suffers. On top of that, the environment suffers from unnecessary driving around the block, and city revenue suffers. Lower city revenue could also mean higher business taxes.
Has it occured to either man that we can have even less cars and more business in the city ? For example a car free S-Granville from 8th to 14th with a tunneled Granville thoroughfare below ? Or a pedestrian zone on Robson, perhaps Friday to Sunday as a starter ? Or more bike/pedestrian friendly residential areas with no car through traffic, far higher parking rates on residential street or parking only on every second street or on only one side of the street ? Or less parking on Davis or Robson, perhaps as one way streets ? Or Alberni with cafes on the street as opposed to a short cut to W-Georgia ?
Where is the vision here by either candidate for a viable pedestrian friendly downtown with more business ?
We need less cars downtown and in residential neighborhoods AND more business !
Why do you expect the entire city to do something you don’t even do, live car free. Why do you still have a car Thomas?
The rethoric could be unfortunate, but the underlying idea seems to be quite right.
When someone suggests “free parking outside downtown after 8pm and on sunday” he is just formulating principles of demand management ( here called “Variable parking rates”) in a way palatable to everyone.
Franck Ducote is right: that could help to support businesses. Everything improving accessibility (and that includes parking availability at the lowest price point possible) help businesses.
In some case, that can be achieved with free parking: it seems to me that is the case on West 4th Avenue in the late evening (By the way, the 84 stop to run after 8pm on Week-end , so that this area is not as well served by Transit as Downtown) and almost everywhere outside Downtown.
In some other case, pay parking could be welcomed: Street parking is free on most of Denman. but you will have hard time to find a spot…same on Cornwall or Arbutus where beach goer’s cars will occupy the street most of the day, after having generated their fair share of congestion: all that doesn’t benefit at all to businesses…quite the contrary: lack of available parking is a deterrent for motorist to visit them.
So Lapointe is right on 2 others accounts
* Vision has basically lost an opportunity to help businesses by having a more sensible parking pricing strategy that this blanket city wide parking rule.
* When Vision explain that “parking demand management” could result in a revenue lost: it accredite the idea that Vision sees the motorist as nothing else as a cash-cow, and disregard any sensible parking maganement policy.
You’ve made a good case for variable parking rates, not for blanket free parking during certain hours. If NPA is in favour of a variable parking scheme like San Francisco’s (like Peter suggests below), then let’s hear that.
The rest of the stuff about gouging motorists and what have you…. I’m not buying it, sorry. Likewise, when Vision talks about lost revenue from parking…. I’m not buying that either, sorry. It’s all just political posturing.
Sounds like the question is “what is the market-clearing price for parking that will leave 1-2 empty stalls per block, on evenings and weekends?” Maybe it’s $0, maybe it’s $2? Maybe it’s a different number on Denman Street versus Cambie Street? But maybe, just maybe, it’s a question of economic/occupancy analysis and not something that should be blindly guessed at in the guise of a campaign promise.
Fundamentally, do we know what price will result in 1-2 spaces always being available evenings and weekends on all metered streets? (I’m assuming this is best for business, because then customers can actually find parking). I doubt that we know the answer to this, though many commenters are seem to know that it must be more than $0 (maybe it is, maybe not) while others are equally sure that $0 parking will still result in easy-to-find stalls. As Kim Campbell said, an election is no time to discuss these sorts of things; that’s what an economic/occupancy analysis or SFPark system is for…
Investing in San Francisco-style variable parking rates is where smart cities are going. This would avoid gouging by making parking free when no one else wants it. It could well mean lower rates in evening hours outside the downtown core- market forces at work!