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Parking, Parking, Parking

It is absurd. It is a sad attempt to raise cash, but I think the city will find it doesn't raise as much as they expect.

I challenge every city councillor to take a walk downtown and see how many empty parking spots there are on the weekends, especially on Sundays.

The extension of the Saturday paid parking hours will hurt bars and restaurants downtown. We've pretty much killed of most of the rest of downtown retail, so hey I suppose lets get rid of them too.

A city council that really cared about downtown or knew what it was doing would not do this.
 
tkoe_ said:
If your only value proposition as a downtown business is free parking, you will fail.
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It makes no sense to raise the price at times when it is generally being underutilized and the remaining downtown business continue to struggle.

If we had a healthy vibrant downtown, where demand exceeded supply consistenly at these times this might make sense, but I think this sort of thing only makes sense currently to anti car ideologues.

Unfortunately along with the ongoing transit safety issues, all this increase will do is drive even more people away from going downtown, when more people are desperately needed. It not just a poor idea, but a very bad one.
 
Edmonton needs to take inspiration from Boston.

“Wild what's possible when you redevelop surface parking. (Boston,📷Gale)” -Hayden Clarkin

Link to the original tweet

Before:

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After:

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it's not just the city - some business owners and landlords don’t do themselves any favours either. i had to see someone in the hsbc tower last thursday so parked in the adjacent city centre parkade about 4:35. i went to one of their stations to pay for 1/2 hour parking and they wanted $15 as they’d already switched to flat rate event parking with no other options available. needless to say i went back to my car and left to park elsewhere.
 
David A said:
It is absurd. It is a sad attempt to raise cash, but I think the city will find it doesn't raise as much as they expect.

I challenge every city councillor to take a walk downtown and see how many empty parking spots there are on the weekends, especially on Sundays.

The extension of the Saturday paid parking hours will hurt bars and restaurants downtown. We've pretty much killed of most of the rest of downtown retail, so hey I suppose lets get rid of them too.

A city council that really cared about downtown or knew what it was doing would not do this.
Click to expand...

I inquired with Coun. Stevenson on this and she said:

"free and low-cost parking can be very inefficient, as it encourages long stays and produces low turnover, especially around downtown shops and attractions. What we found during the pandemic is that the free parking incentives that were provided in the downtown led to less turnover and therefore less availability for people wanting to access local shops and businesses.

Consistent with that management approach, while we are increasing parking rates in high demand areas and expanding hours where paid parking is in effect, we are also removing paid parking from 68 other zones and converting them to free parking. City of Edmonton EPark stalls also remain price competitive with private options, with the high demand rate of $4.50/h and private options in the $4.00 to $6.00 range. Pricing in low demand areas will remain unchanged at the current $1.00 to $2.50 range. An important part of the management approach is ensuring that we're monitoring outcomes and if we see sub-optimal usage of parking spaces (less that 75%) resulting from the changes, the team can revisit and rebalance those fees."
 
TAS said:
I inquired with Coun. Stevenson on this and she said:

"free and low-cost parking can be very inefficient, as it encourages long stays and produces low turnover, especially around downtown shops and attractions. What we found during the pandemic is that the free parking incentives that were provided in the downtown led to less turnover and therefore less availability for people wanting to access local shops and businesses.

Consistent with that management approach, while we are increasing parking rates in high demand areas and expanding hours where paid parking is in effect, we are also removing paid parking from 68 other zones and converting them to free parking. City of Edmonton EPark stalls also remain price competitive with private options, with the high demand rate of $4.50/h and private options in the $4.00 to $6.00 range. Pricing in low demand areas will remain unchanged at the current $1.00 to $2.50 range. An important part of the management approach is ensuring that we're monitoring outcomes and if we see sub-optimal usage of parking spaces (less that 75%) resulting from the changes, the team can revisit and rebalance those fees."
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Very easy solution - limit the free time to say 1or 2 hours on Saturdays if turn over is a concern! Has no one at the city ever thought of this?

On Sundays and evenings there seems to be quite a few empty spots in many places even though its free, so I don't think its a problem then.
 
New collab between Climate Town and Not Just Bikes on the cost of parking to cities and individuals and how the oil industry and car manufacturers *underhandedly collaborated to get their way to creating car centric 20th century cities.

Edmonton was briefly noted as being one of the first cities to do away with parking minimums (thanks Mayor Iveson). Edmonton's progressiveness when it comes to these types of things - zoning, bike lanes (we're hosting the world winter cycling conference in 2024) etc has received some notable attention and helps with City branding. This video below, for instance, is only a day old and has 333k views.

Screenshot_20230718-095605_YouTube.jpg


 
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I hate to be a negative nelly but it seems the cities getting rid of parking minimums already have so much parking that the decision message feels less like "we don't need parking" and more like "we have enough parking." You never see cities like Montreal, Vancouver, Philadelphia, or San Francisco getting rid of parking minimums. Maybe we need to not just end parking minimums but also start eliminating existing parking on a mass scale.
 
trevorhayden said:
I hate to be a negative nelly but it seems the cities getting rid of parking minimums already have so much parking that the decision message feels less like "we don't need parking" and more like "we have enough parking." You never see cities like Montreal, Vancouver, Philadelphia, or San Francisco getting rid of parking minimums. Maybe we need to not just end parking minimums but also start eliminating existing parking on a mass scale.
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You know what would be great, not just stopping at eliminating parking minimums, but actually following through at a City level to eliminate the oversupply of redundant parking especially downtown.

The number of impark lots that at best look to be 40% full at peak that could not have their permits extended, the number of illegal lots with no permit to operate a parking lot, and the number of residential lots that are applying for to interim operate as a lot before development (for example, Westrich at the corner of 104 st and 103 ave) could and should be eliminated. There is no reason to continue to allow this much parking while at the same time say we dont need any new parking.

Bring the supply into balance with the demand while also forcing the land speculators to not be lazy.
 
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