ericmacm
Active Member
I wouldn't consider Metrolinx as short-sighted as you think they are. They're definitely not "wasting" money by building these lots and parkades. We saw earlier this year that they're thinking about charging for parking, and I would be pretty confident that this idea will only gain momentum down the road. Even if their rates are modest, it'll generate a lot of money, considering they have somewhere around 80,000 parking spots across all stations.
Transit-oriented development is unfortunately not practical just yet for a lot of these stations. For many, there's way more demand for parking than there would ever be for TOD. GO stations generally serve huge suburban areas and they'd essentially be shutting a large market out if they had no parking. Eventually it will happen though, it'll just take longer. Cooksville is in a good position for it to happen sooner since it'll be right next to the LRT, but the parkade is a practical step forward in the meantime.
Transit-oriented development is unfortunately not practical just yet for a lot of these stations. For many, there's way more demand for parking than there would ever be for TOD. GO stations generally serve huge suburban areas and they'd essentially be shutting a large market out if they had no parking. Eventually it will happen though, it'll just take longer. Cooksville is in a good position for it to happen sooner since it'll be right next to the LRT, but the parkade is a practical step forward in the meantime.