rbt
Senior Member
Paying slightly over $200 a year just for the "right" to park my own car in front of my own home in a non-immediate-downtown area with single family homes? That's kind of crazy.
I don't know about crazy; but certainly unusual.
Seems on-par with the cost of buying land for a very simple 1-car driveway and maintenance for it.
Land is $1M/acre through much of Toronto, a parking spot is 180sqft (9' x 20' for parallel parking). So 242 spaces per acre roughly equals $130/year for interest only payments @ 3%. Driveway maintenance is about $4/sqft every 20 years, or roughly $31/year. Add in snow clearing, and enforcement overhead to ensure the space is used by authorized permit holders, and the $200/year mark is pretty close to costs the city absorbs for that parking space at the side of the road.
Now, whether that should be in property taxes tied to the house, or as a userfee is certainly debatable. I typically prefer user fees for non-essential services.
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