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“Greedy Parking Hogs” concerned about their neighbourhood’s streets
With condo expansions reaching the outer region of Toronto, many neighbourhoods fear an increase of traffic due to insufficient parking in the city. The latest area to face these concerns is The Beach. Residents of this neighbourhood argue that the 70-unit condo building at Queen and Woodbine need more than 65 parking spaces to keep from congesting their intersections and crowding their streets.
Developer Brad Lamb has responded unsympathetically to such concern by stating, “Everybody, including the greedy parking hogs in the Beach and in High Park and in the Annex and all the other places . . . they need to understand. Get with it, this is the future.” Lamb’s intentions are to install more parking elevators and car-share spaces as a way to reduce parking and improve business. For locations like Queen and Woodbine, developers feel that only 30 to 40 spaces would be necessary and that the 65 is already generous.
Who’s Listening?
Many other anti-development neighbourhoods are being included in this debate. Regions such as High Park and the Annex are under constant struggle to keep the urban commotion out. But as seen through Lamb’s comment, is anyone listening to these complaints? Surprisingly, these residents are alone in their fight for additional condo parking in Toronto. In fact, there have been published arguments that claim excess parking in Toronto is the real concern.
Condo Parking in Toronto
For condominium owners, parking is expensive. On average a space will go for $35,000 a year (in some cases, condos charge over $100,000 for a parking spot). Although this may be a large sum of money just to park a car, it does offer incentive for people to utilize the transit system and ditch their cars all together. But it appears that condo owners aren’t the culprits of street congestion in residential areas, and this is why developers will hear nothing of their protest.
The people commuting into the cities are the reason why Torontonians fear parked cars. While parking lots around the city are reasonably priced, and far removed from the streets, people still prefer to pop a few coins in the meter and leave their car on the street all day. This is especially true for residential neighbourhoods. The fight for more parking is rather counter-productive if the situation is looked at from this angle.
