Akben-Marchand: Here is why customer parking spots support a city’s car-free standard of living

After I became in university, I in short worked as a security guard at a downtown condo. While every resident had their very have parking location, reasonably a few which went unused, the Seventies towers weren’t constructed with any customer parking spaces.

Over the years, management found about a dozen locations where visiting cars could perhaps squeeze in, and even that was generally not enough.

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This is because, until 2016, developers were not required to include visitor parking in new residential buildings downtown.

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Residents who moved into the first condo building on LeBreton Residences learned this the hard way. While quite a few of them believed the development would include visitor parking, it was built without any. Their guests must now park on the street.

Adjustments to the Metropolis’s minimal parking requirements in 2016 reintroduced minimal customer parking, while reducing general parking requirements.

On April 29, the City of Ottawa will table a report on adraft zoning bylawwhich extends the 2016 reforms by eliminating minimum parking requirements for residents in developments citywide.

This could imply that developers with a high level of interest in transit and active transportation won’t be required to provide more parking spaces than the market demands — and hopefully, this will help lower the cost of units.

However, the new bylaw will still include minimum visitor parking requirements, and that is, of course, a good thing.

Believe it or not, visitor parking is based on a car-free lifestyle. That’s because these visitors are not your aunt coming over from out of town. They are service providers such as cable and mobile phone technicians, tradespeople, movers, delivery personnel, and personal support workers. And even for the occasional time you might need to rent a car for the weekend.

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As society moves toward having everything — from groceries to furniture to fast food — delivered, the cycling community grows, and public transit hopefully improves, this will continue to make it easier to live without a private car.

Finally, you may decide whether or not you live in a building with parking. In contrast, or not. In contrast, you cannot decide how goods and services are delivered to you.

When most developments do not provide space for these activities, visitors’ vehicles end up parking on public streets (and often, on the sidewalks!).

Downtown especially, automobile storage is not the best and simplest use of scarce public right-of-ways. In a livable city environment, space is needed for wide sidewalks, bicycle lanes, bus stops, benches, and trees.

We can debate exactly how much customer parking is required when a new residential tower is built, but at least some will be necessary to prevent necessary ‘customer’ vehicles from becoming a public burden.

It won’t fix the parking space for presumably the most up-to-date security guards at the downtown condo, however the parking principles in the Metropolis’s proposed fresh zoning bylaw will support cut general automobile utilize, and that’s an correct thing for our metropolis.

Charles Akben-Marchand (centretown.blogspot.com) lives in Ottawa, rides a bike, and doesn’t have a automobile.

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