RapidTO: Citywide Streetcar Priority (City of Toronto, TTC)

[just east of the creek]

And, of course, the revenue it generates is paltry compared to the value of the actual really good uses you could put the land to.

I think private parking is much more market sensitive, and therefore much more expensive. I also think this forum has a
previously discussed taxing parking at a higher rate than currently, private or not, and that is certainly something that should be done. In todays age, the idea of having municipal parking in the City of Toronto at ground level, without something above (housing) is just wrong. And the idea that it might be cheaper than a TTC fare is also wrong, wrong, wrong.

 

[crs1026]

I agree with the direction and theory of this discussion but I think it may be throwing the pendulum over too far…. or maybe weaving too many agendas into the solution.

I find it curious that one would advocate income-sensitive fares for transit while assuming that parking need and utility is totally discretionary and it’s “fair” to always throw an economic penalty on it on the assumption that drivers are always rich people…. or can pass on the cost within an economic model…. or don’t really need to drive.

There is a level of vehicle intrusion (and hence parking) that is “pardonable” or even desirable and needs to be be accommodated in a city. At times there may even be a surfeit of parking supply (my camera club loves downtown outings on Sunday mornings, because on-street parking is free until noon while transit is on its slowest schedule, and taking expensive cameras on the subway is not necessarily on).

My theory is that anticipating difficulty in finding a parking space is a much bigger lever towards choosing transit than anticipating. cost. In our society, cost of living is highly politicised and in my view we respond to it irrationally.

The most expensive downtown parking I have encountered (short of parking for the Grey Cup) involved taking an elderly relative for medical appointments (or even more extreme, having to rush them to ER and then attend for a long period while they are treated and their condition remained iffy). I’m not sure that putting an income gate on that kind of situation is desirable. Nor would I choose transit for those trips.

Less extreme examples would be people who are conducting business where mobility is material - an example would be a health care worker conducting home visits. A lot of occupations that demand auto use are low paying… do we want to further alter the economics of that work ? Or insist that those folks switch to transit

”Who gets to drive in a crowded city” is a more complicated thing than we can solve with supply and demand pricing. I’m not sure we have hit the sweet spot in that discussion. It’s a very critical question for many cities, including ours.

I’m fully supportive of getting cars out of the way of streetcars, and the transitions towards shared use of our streets will naturally reduce parking availability, and that’s a good thing. I just don’t feel we are ready to take this further yet.

- Paul

 

[W. K. Lis]

In the 1950's, the Toronto Parking Authority (Green P) was created to provide cheaper parking spaces than the commercial lots. It was so that drivers from the suburbs (Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough) would have a cheap place to park their single-occupant cars.

At the very least, the Green P lots and garages should increase their rates OVER the rate of inflation to match or exceed the commercial lots. To discourage drivers from driving their single-occupant vehicles downtown and other parking lots & garages around the city.

 

[afransen]

I don't have a problem with providing a reasonable amount of parking, provided it is done at least on a cost recovery basis. If building some supplementary off-street lots is the price of eliminating street parking, that's fine.

 

[toaster29]

I remember hearing on TVO once that the highest percentage of car ownership in the city of Toronto were in Rexdale and Malvern, two of the lowest income areas in the city. Not sure if this can be verified anywhere, but the idea (especially in Toronto) that car ownership is somehow related to wealth is not true.

 

[Northern Light]

I agree with the direction and theory of this discussion but I think it may be throwing the pendulum over too far…. or maybe weaving too many agendas into the solution.

I find it curious that one would advocate income-sensitive fares for transit while assuming that parking need and utility is totally discretionary and it’s “fair” to always throw an economic penalty on it on the assumption that drivers are always rich people…. or can pass on the cost within an economic model…. or don’t really need to drive.

There is a level of vehicle intrusion (and hence parking) that is “pardonable” or even desirable and needs to be be accommodated in a city. At times there may even be a surfeit of parking supply (my camera club loves downtown outings on Sunday mornings, because on-street parking is free until noon while transit is on its slowest schedule, and taking expensive cameras on the subway is not necessarily on).

Lets start w/the above. Ahem As someone who wanders all over the City, usually via TTC with an expensive camera (which I choose not to wear around my neck while on the train mind you) I find this a very weak argument. If you can afford an expensive camera, you can afford $15 to park once a week for an outing if you so choose.

My theory is that anticipating difficulty in finding a parking space is a much bigger lever towards choosing transit than anticipating. cost.

Sure; but in a market economy with market-priced parking, there will be more availability with fewer spaces.

In our society, cost of living is highly politicised and in my view we respond to it irrationally.

Sure. However, I'm not sure I see that in this discussion except from one poster.

The most expensive downtown parking I have encountered (short of parking for the Grey Cup) involved taking an elderly relative for medical appointments (or even more extreme, having to rush them to ER and then attend for a long period while they are treated and their condition remained iffy). I’m not sure that putting an income gate on that kind of situation is desirable. Nor would I choose transit for those trips.

I've had to do this exact same thing, (I drove my mother to UHN hospitals and other downtown locations). It was a hassle; and it was necessary as she physically could not walk far (COPD, used a walker) and sufferered from moderate dementia (no short term memory) and so couldn't travel alone.

If the cost of parking is burdensome, there is the alternative of a cab/uber; moreover, if you own a car its likely that the cost of parking is not an undue hardship.

To the extent that it is; we need to discuss both why a car is necessary in instance 'x'; but we also need to discuss why anyone's income is so inadequate. For those requiring frequent hospital care, there are generally parking passes available which cap monthly costs; many hospitals will also comp parking in hardship cases if one asks.

Less extreme examples would be people who are conducting business where mobility is material - an example would be a health care worker conducting home visits. A lot of occupations that demand auto use are low paying… do we want to further alter the economics of that work ? Or insist that those folks switch to transit

By why is the cost of transit not then a similar burden? When my mother required daily homecare at the end of her life, the nice woman who came each morning, came from Pickering, she took transit, coming by GO Train to Danforth station, then transferring to TTC (at additional cost), then walking. She then took transit between each job site all day, before taking GO back to Pickering. Her daily transit costs, (I asked) were over $20 (with a GO pass), w/o one, they would have far exceeded $35.

By comparison, parking is next to free in most of the City (if not free)

 

[turbanplanner]

First off, I never proposed a condo.

Second, most GreenP sites are above ground, this comment perpetuates your rep. as a troll. Either your lying or you don't know what you're talking about. Either way you should hush.



Because:

a) Transit is more environmentally desirable and more cost-efficient

b) Low-income people are disproportionately affected, as you note, but the admin. cost of a credit is substantial.

did you not read this part? Every one I visit downtown is underground so you'd get nothing back. For ones like the Adelaide one someone mentioned I'd be ok to tear it down to create housing once the streetcar lines and construction are done, adding a garage underground.

Fair, you didn't propose a condo but most of the ones I've seen above ground are fairly small, you couldn't really use the land for anything else.

"Sure; but in a market economy with market-priced parking, there will be more availability with fewer spaces."

That assumes price is the only factor. People feel the TTC is unsafe and unreliable.

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Just last night (~8:30pm) I was riding on the subway and someone came into the car and started screaming obscenities, he then sat right next to me and started uncomfortably staring at my screen.
Something like this or a service suspension happens every third ride for me, until this is fixed you're going to have a hard time convincing people to give up their cars.

Screenshot of my presto since it's inconceivable I take the TTC

 

[Northern Light]

did you not read this part? Every one I visit downtown is underground so you'd get nothing back. For ones like the Adelaide one someone mentioned I'd be ok to tear it down to create housing once the streetcar lines and construction are done, adding a garage underground.

Fair, you didn't propose a condo but most of the ones I've seen above ground are fairly small, you couldn't really use the land for anything else.

"Sure; but in a market economy with market-priced parking, there will be more availability with fewer spaces."

That assumes price is the only factor. People feel the TTC is unsafe and unreliable.

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Just last night (~8:30pm) I was riding on the subway and someone came into the car and started screaming obscenities, he then sat right next to me and started uncomfortably staring at my screen.
Something like this or a service suspension happens every third ride for me, until this is fixed you're going to have a hard time convincing people to give up their cars.

Screenshot of my presto since it's inconceivable I take the TTC
View attachment 467558

I count 8 surface car parks owned by Green P downtown and 3 more above-grade garages for a total of 11, non-underground Green P lots (Spadina - Sherbourne, at or south of Bloor.

 

[crs1026]

Lets start w/the above. Ahem As someone who wanders all over the City, usually via TTC with an expensive camera (which I choose not to wear around my neck while on the train mind you) I find this a very weak argument. If you can afford an expensive camera, you can afford $15 to park once a week for an outing if you so choose.

Absolutely, the price point could rise without anyone who can afford a camera noticing the cost. My point was more about the opportunity to exploit the use of the auto at low-volume times. Zipping downtown on a Sunday morning and parking right at the meeting point may beat taking transit , and there is no harm in this.....so long as no transit is delayed and the street design permits some on street parking.

If you take the average small Green-P lot (or stretch of on-street metered parking) with, hypothetically, 20 spaces. One could ask why the City does not charge at least a dollar or two at all times. That's eminently sensible in terms of revenue management. But it makes no sense to charge so much that only one car parks at, say, $15. Better to charge $1 and have all 20 spaces full. Or $2.50 and only have 10 parking.

If we are talking about supply and demand, we have to respect the true cost and the true resulting demand curve, and not conflate that with an agenda to reduce auto use where there is still sufficient road and parking capacity available.

The threshold of concern is not the point when people choose to drive over transit... but rather when the 21st car arrives and now we have congestion. Until that point, empty parking spaces are a valuable resource that we have every good reason to exploit to the maximum when it delivers value without creating impacts on transit, cyclists, or pedestrians.

We need to be recalibrating the degree of auto intrusiveness in our society, but my point is - the result will be non-zero. I will still drive downtown for $5 parking on a Sunday morning, if it lets me sleep in an extra half hour. That's a revenue management opportunity, definitely.

Sure; but in a market economy with market-priced parking, there will be more availability with fewer spaces.

This is where I will sound a bit retrograde, but so be it. Maybe I'm just jaded.

We are so politicised that any true cost or valid price point that is presented to the public results in immediate wails that some group of people "need" a lower price, and that a ton of injustices are created by resorting to supply and demand. And then arguments about whether that achieves social equity (most will suggest it doesn't, in its native form). And then some arcane measures will be imposed to remedy all of that

It's not that I oppose any of that good intent, but I'm just cynical that the end result will be anywhere close to effective market forces at work. And the debates and accusations get tiresome.

Keeping these things simple is critical. If we are managing to supply and demand, we shouldn't dilute that with other agendas, as worthy as these may be in their own right.

When my mother required daily homecare at the end of her life, the nice woman who came each morning, came from Pickering, she took transit, coming by GO Train to Danforth station, then transferring to TTC (at additional cost), then walking. She then took transit between each job site all day, before taking GO back to Pickering. Her daily transit costs, (I asked) were over $20 (with a GO pass), w/o one, they would have far exceeded $35.

By comparison, parking is next to free in most of the City (if not free)

I wasn't thinking of the PSW who appears for a shift, but rather people who may need to make 5 or 6 calls in a day. Those people do get value out of their auto mobility. My point was, I'm not sure that charging them more will test their need or align value with their choice of mode.

- Paul

PS - I really liked the suggestion that Green P lots need to have density on top of them, but I question how often that will actually be feasible. These lots do tend to be small, or narrow, or oddly shaped. I am not an architect or builder, but I wonder if the measures needed to safely put a building on top of automobiles will cost more than it's worth.... or that the GFA required to break even will be so great that the idea only has merit where we can build a tower. Where it works, I love it, but it may have to be selectively applied

 

[Northern Light]

Absolutely, the price point could rise without anyone who can afford a camera noticing the cost. My point was more about the opportunity to exploit the use of the auto at low-volume times. Zipping downtown on a Sunday morning and parking right at the meeting point may beat taking transit , and there is no harm in this.....so long as no transit is delayed and the street design permits some on street parking.

If you take the average small Green-P lot (or stretch of on-street metered parking) with, hypothetically, 20 spaces. One could ask why the City does not charge at least a dollar or two at all times. That's eminently sensible in terms of revenue management. But it makes no sense to charge so much that only one car parks at, say, $15. Better to charge $1 and have all 20 spaces full. Or $2.50 and only have 10 parking.

If we are talking about supply and demand, we have to respect the true cost and the true resulting demand curve, and not conflate that with an agenda to reduce auto use where there is still sufficient road and parking capacity available.

I'm essentially in agreement w/the above; I would suggest that if you charge $5 for that parking in your example, and that results in 4/20 spaces full, maybe that allows us to reallocate some of those spaces, even within a parking lot context, to say, shade trees, (one tree with good soil volume is about 1 parking spot); or perhaps we choose to devote two spaces to sheltered bike parking. In that scenario, the 20 space lot gets 8 shade trees and bike parking and becomes a 10-space lot with 4 spaces full.

I'm not suggesting this be done with animus towards those who wish to park, but rather than as we raise prices and demand accordingly drops, we can then find better uses for some of these spaces.

We need to be recalibrating the degree of auto intrusiveness in our society, but my point is - the result will be non-zero. I will still drive downtown for $5 parking on a Sunday morning, if it lets me sleep in an extra half hour. That's a revenue management opportunity, definitely.

There's a place for that choice, its one I might make too; but I would ask, should the parking be in place merely to serve that low-demand period on Sunday morning? Presumably you would agree it should not. Again, presumably, you would contend that space is there for the peak-demand parker, and is just surplus in the low-demand time period.

But what if the peak demand parking provision is excessive, because the price is artificially low, and because transit is poorer than it ought to be, in part because the City doesn't allocate market parking revenue to support the TTC?

Put another way, if weekday parking max'es at $20 for argument's sake, whose to say it shouldn't be $25 or $30? Whose to say that 'free' or $2 per hour spot on street shouldn't be paid and $6 an hour? If one does these things and demand falls off, because people choose to walk, or cycle, or take transit etc; then less space will be needed, and less surplus available on Sunday morning.

***

On your next bit I would simply say politics enters all things unavoidably, and almost all issues are complex. I certainly favour transparency and avoiding needless complexity in public policy, in all issues, not merely parking.

I wasn't thinking of the PSW who appears for a shift, but rather people who may need to make 5 or 6 calls in a day. Those people do get value out of their auto mobility. My point was, I'm not sure that charging them more will test their need or align value with their choice of mode.

The PSW in my mothers case did not come down to see just her, she saw my mother for 1 hour, then TTC'd to her next client and the next after that, all day long until taking GO home. Arguably her trip would have been easier by car, though that would be dependent on free parking at each client's address. My point in providing the example is that she faced a burden of high prices on GO and TTC and that I'd be more sympathetic to her case than that of a driver. (keeping in mind I am a driver)

PS - I really liked the suggestion that Green P lots need to have density on top of them, but I question how often that will actually be feasible. These lots do tend to be small, or narrow, or oddly shaped. I am not an architect or builder, but I wonder if the measures needed to safely put a building on top of automobiles will cost more than it's worth.... or that the GFA required to break even will be so great that the idea only has merit where we can build a tower. Where it works, I love it, but it may have to be selectively applied

The large parking lots n/e of Yonge/St. Clair will be the subject of a multi-tower development in the near future.

There are several others in various stages of development.

The smallest properties, taken on their own, are likely better suited to parks/public squares or the like; but might also be combined with adjacent private property in any development; this too is in process on more than 1 site.

 

[crs1026]

There's a place for that choice, its one I might make too; but I would ask, should the parking be in place merely to serve that low-demand period on Sunday morning? Presumably you would agree it should not. Again, presumably, you would contend that space is there for the peak-demand parker, and is just surplus in the low-demand time period.

But what if the peak demand parking provision is excessive, because the price is artificially low, and because transit is poorer than it ought to be, in part because the City doesn't allocate market parking revenue to support the TTC?

I’m totally in agreement that once we reach saturation (which definitely happens on business weekdays, and more and more with evenings in the core, thanks to entertainment demand) the demand price for parking should rise…. to a fairly cutthroat level, actually. And if we deliberately overshoot a little, and spaces stay idle at peak, then we should strategically reclaim that capacity and put the square footage to better uses.

I’m actually surprised at how easily I find sidestreet parking in the city, at all times of day…. not so much in the core, but certainly in the streetcar suburbs. This says to me that we can force parking off the main streets (where there is clearly conflict with streetcars cyclists etc). In the core, parking costs more, but is generally available if one is willing to pay the going rate. All-day rates are still reasonable in many places.Certainly, the Green P rate in the central city ought to attempt to match, not undercut, commercial rates. And if this happened, we might find some spaces can be freed up.

- Paul

 

[turbanplanner]

I’m totally in agreement that once we reach saturation (which definitely happens on business weekdays, and more and more with evenings in the core, thanks to entertainment demand) the demand price for parking should rise…. to a fairly cutthroat level, actually. And if we deliberately overshoot a little, and spaces stay idle at peak, then we should strategically reclaim that capacity and put the square footage to better uses.

I’m actually surprised at how easily I find sidestreet parking in the city, at all times of day…. not so much in the core, but certainly in the streetcar suburbs. This says to me that we can force parking off the main streets (where there is clearly conflict with streetcars cyclists etc). In the core, parking costs more, but is generally available if one is willing to pay the going rate. All-day rates are still reasonable in many places.Certainly, the Green P rate in the central city ought to attempt to match, not undercut, commercial rates. And if this happened, we might find some spaces can be freed up.

- Paul

I’m not sure if anyone here noticed, but street parking used to be free after 9 PM, but now they’ve extended it to midnight every night on most of the streets I saw, also raised the price quite a bit

 

[jmi22]

Why don't we use this logic with things like the TTC and provide reimbursement for low income people?
It would be way cheaper to up fares and discourage needless trips, and employees would have more leverage for WFH

I remember when we feared the province was going to do this after uploading the TTC, and everyone had a different tune here haha

You can't just turn a parking lot into a condo. What are some of the green P lots taking up valuable space downtown? Every one I visit downtown is underground so you'd get nothing back.

jesus you are really talking out of your behind. Every downtown Green P is below ground? Not even worth engaging with you

 

[jmi22]

did you not read this part? Every one I visit downtown is underground so you'd get nothing back. For ones like the Adelaide one someone mentioned I'd be ok to tear it down to create housing once the streetcar lines and construction are done, adding a garage underground.

Fair, you didn't propose a condo but most of the ones I've seen above ground are fairly small, you couldn't really use the land for anything else.

"Sure; but in a market economy with market-priced parking, there will be more availability with fewer spaces."

That assumes price is the only factor. People feel the TTC is unsafe and unreliable.

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Most recent News News business news stories and video from CP24

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Just last night (~8:30pm) I was riding on the subway and someone came into the car and started screaming obscenities, he then sat right next to me and started uncomfortably staring at my screen.
Something like this or a service suspension happens every third ride for me, until this is fixed you're going to have a hard time convincing people to give up their cars.

Screenshot of my presto since it's inconceivable I take the TTC
View attachment 467558

"Every one I visit"
Believe it or not you are not the center of the universe.

 

[Aplus23]

I remember hearing on TVO once that the highest percentage of car ownership in the city of Toronto were in Rexdale and Malvern, two of the lowest income areas in the city. Not sure if this can be verified anywhere, but the idea (especially in Toronto) that car ownership is somehow related to wealth is not true.

Well when you're in Malvern you're definitely gonna need a car when it's 30-45minutes to the nearest transit station. STC, if you're heading north west from Malvern it's not unitil Agincourt or don Mills before a transit station.

I'm not familiar with rexdale, is that a transit desert as well?