Parking reform

Changing or eliminating municipal requirements to provide parking is critical to creating more affordable housing, encouraging sustainable transportation, reducing storm runoff and reducing heat island effects, a US expert told a Toronto conference last month. “In many places in the United States cities are now eliminating their parking requirements,” Dr Dave King told a transportation gathering.

It’s a trend that may be especially significant for cities like Hamilton that are trying to intensify infill development to avoid more sprawl onto farmland and natural areas. As King points out, “parking is something that is very much under local control” with no need to get permission to modify from senior levels of government.

King did his PhD at UCLA under Donald Shoup – the acclaimed author of The High Cost of Free Parking. In his US research, King found there are average of four parking spaces for every vehicle and that heavily biases communities in favour of cars and against transit, bikes and any other mode of transportation.

It also drives up the cost of housing where at least one parking space and often more than that are required for each residential unit. King says the first question facing builders is “how do we fit the parking on site?” Often as much surface space must be devoted to parking as to the accompanying business.

“This is a terrible use of space”, argues King. “You end up with a lot of surface parking which pushes destinations that we want to reach further apart from each other.”

Surface parking also means more stormwater runoff that has to be dealt with by cities. It also pushes up temperatures in the well-known urban heat island effect. Both municipal problems are being quickly worsened by climate change.

“If we making driving easier, we make all other modes of transport harder” and it “makes it more difficult to try anything else” such as building reuse, King says. Parking requirements often means having to tear down a second building just to create spaces for cars. “It is absurd that cities should tell businesses how their patrons are going to get to their businesses,” he declared.

King spoke at a Transport Futures on-line conference, one of six held in the last few weeks of 2023 as part of the forum’s fifteenth anniversary celebrations. The low-cost webinars are organized by Healthy Transport Consulting and have featured dozens of experts from across the globe.

Budget comments

The second and final meeting set aside to receive public delegations on the city’s 2024 budget is Tuesday, January 16 starting at 3 pm. Register to speak to this meeting of the general issues committee at https://www.hamilton.ca/city-council/council-committee/council-committee-meetings/request-speak-committee-council. Unfortunately, the actual 2024 tax-supported budget has just been released. The water budget was approved and finalized before the end of 2023.