Parking In Windsor
Instead of responding to another thread. I thought my lengthy list of Parking issues deserved its own post
1. Parking is often about perception vs. reality, that doesn’t mean that you can ignore it, People never consider the walk from a far away mall spot not to mention that people rarely if ever consider the distance from the mall entrance to the actual store they want inside.
2. whats funny is that every downtown lists it as a main concern, if you compare windsor, we actually have less problems than most. Every successful downtown lists it in the top five complaints.
3. Free parking as we saw is actually a bad thing because it prevents parking spots from turning over. We actually need more parking officers chalking tires and discouraging downtown employees using the spot all day feeding the meter every two hours. (you’d be suprise how many do that) It actually still is an offense to stay in a spot all day even if you pay (and I admit I’m guilty of that offense). Retailers like the Men’s shop depend on those spaces.
4.We also should have two tiered rates. spots by the art gallery should cost less than Ouellette. Same for other desirable spots in other BIA’s.
5 Some popular areas don’t even have meters which is a fairness issue. THere has been two-three meterless spots in the former bus stop in front of shanfields for over 3 years that we could be making money on.
6 No one has ever gone through the city spot by spot. Some areas should be 15 minutes, some should be as much as 3 hours for tourists who want a meal and to shop.
7 I proposed a program several years ago called “voluntary compliance” The written policy was that if you caught the officer before they left the vehicle they had to rip up the ticket under one condition - you had to smile and be nice to them. If you were rude, you still get the ticket. Talk about an attitude adjustment for visitors. I thought the city’s union would demand it as a work environment improvement and safety issue but they rep just stared at me blankly. A parking ticket is the number one reason that upsets customers.
8 Years ago I got council to vote for a 5 minute grace period for meters (they actually count to minus 5 before they expire). It took almost two years to finally change the meters and no one has verified they’ve been changed or even publicized it to the public
And last but not least, few if any know about the reduced parking token rate. If you buy tokens in $500 volumes you get them for half price. I asked if we could advertise it and was told if too many people used them they would cancel the program
As far as I’m concerned parking shortages signify success
Post Feedback
When I lived in Thunder Bay, they had something which I thought was kinda neat. You pay a flat fee to the city every month/year, and they give you a plastic card that you can swipe at the meter/garage/lot. It would give you 2 hours at the meter every time you swipe it. I’m not sure how much the actually card cost because I never bought one, but I know that all of the Sales Reps from my work had them, as it not only saved them money, but it was just easier than having to look for change all the time.
In regards to those tokens… that is something I would love to purchase, if I knew where to buy them.
People who wish to shop (if we ever get to that point) downtown will not buy cards to park, will not buy $500 tokens. They want to park and go about their business. If employees are taking the spots then I would imagine a proper business owner would tell them where they have to park and if infractinos are constant you get another employee. Why would a business owner allow such stupidity. It is like cutting off one’s hands and then complain you can’t make dinner.
I think he meant that the people taking the storefront spots work downtown but not at the store where they are parking.
Good posting Mark!
1. I live in the core, it is quicker to take the bus to Devonshire mall especially at Christmas time and be dropped off than spend the time driving around and around and around and a….. looking for a closer parking spot! Which is funny because the same people as you have noted complain about having to drive around and around downtown. if I bought to much (hardly) or some large item, I take a taxi home.
2. It is our over convenient societies expectations that people don’t walk more or have mallitis (spartial perception) … can’t see the store from where they park, they can’t figure it how to get there, it isn’t a straight line! And they may have to actually rub shoulders with other people on the street of all kinds. Malls are sterile environments exclusively for the sub-urbane people, who don’t want to know their neighbours or the merchants.
3. Indeed Free Parking is a bad thing, another hidden subsidy for the car owner. And yes the shop/restaurant owners do sit on those spots. Got a tire club with your name on it Mark!
4. Yes, a tiered system should be in place, .prime spots in front of stores would be more for a shorter length of time, those farther away cheaper. The farthest parking garage or parking lot downtown is still closer than the farthest perimeters of Devonshire mall, with the closest spots going to..yep.. you guessed it, shop owners and their staff!
5. All spots should be metered as 4 above.
6. Encourage tourist to use the parking garages with a tourist rate and being from Lasalle et al doesn’t count!
7. A little to late, they, the traffic authority write so darn fast it is unbelievable!
8. The clock is ticking, the pen is drawn, poised, the runner gets caught a light, fumbles for change, out of breath, stands there stunned, ticket written. OOOPs to late! Time management is hard!
Let’s see, already this morning I have walked to Food Basics, stopped at Shoppers, picked up my newspapers at Kim’s, had a coffee and some convertation at the Coffee Exchange which is moving north on Ouellette. And talked with merchants and neighbours on the street. Parking was not involved in any of those operations…Sorry city!
I like what Mark McK posted about the swipe cards and parking.
I’m laughing to myself right now! Imagine metered parking at Devonshire Mall or any other big boxer type mall? They would have to keep cardiac units permanently stationed at each entrance at the malls for those who can only waddle, let alone run to feed the meter!
One contradiction that I wanted to speak to was the issue of parking in a blog like scaledown. It is our mission to advocate for walkability.
However scaledown also advocates for local independant businesses. Parking is a major issue for these businesses as national chains are located in shopping malls and big box centers which do not have to deal with the issue.
Also until we reverse the declining population in the core, local independant businesses rely on parking more and more as they try to create destinations worthy of attracting suburbanites
So does parking issues not a part of walkability sure, but it is a part of supporting local independant businesses which still rely on cars
As far as the tokens go, its actually $250 for $500 dollars worth. They’re available at the DWBIA office upon order by anyone. This is available to all the BIA’s but no one ever talks about it
The original intention was so businesses would buy them in bulk and give out the tokens to their customers as an incentive.
Its a kafkaesque situation, as soon as the city councillors realize this exists or admin sees it being used, I’m sure it will be cancelled, get your tokens now.
BTW they work at the city owned parking garages too!!! Takes a bit of time to feed in $10 of tokens for a daily spot but it saves you $5 bucks. I’ve done it many times
(I”m also hording a few bricks myself.)
P.S. Put the tire club away, trying to get better. Trust me, if you knew the amount of parking tickets I pay per year, you’d question my sanity
I’ll be ordering my tokens tomorrow. lol
EVOLUTION? … REVOLUTION!..COOL!
Park(ing) Day: Turning Metered Parking Spots Into Public Parks (VIDEO)
Hooray, one of my favourite days of the year: International Park(ing) day. This glorious anti-car festival only started in 2005, when a San Francisco-based group called REBAR decided that they would take over a parking space for a day and turn it into a park. So they did.
They brought along some astroturf and a bench and a tree and fed the metre all day long and had a lovely day with people asking what they were doing and why. As one of their members explained, they re-interpreted a parking space as a potential inexpensive short-term lease, and decided that it didn’t just have to be for cars: the day was a success.
Videos here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/19/parking-day-turning-meter_n_127672.html
Living in Toronto for a long time I’m all to familiar with the pains of parking, anywhere. I don’t think there should be any parking on Ouellette, but that’s because I believe it should be shut down North and South, leaving the cross streets open and made a pedestrian area. That would leave the street for people to walk down, can have some street vendors, in the summer patios can open. I’ve been to Ottawa a couple times and I believe there is an area that’s a pedestrian area with no cars and it’s quite nice. I know it sounds crazy but Windsor has to stop it’s urban planning being car based only.
I think it’s Salzburg (years ago now) that has this…
The entire downtown is closed off and is pedestrian only with the exception of buses and emergency vehicles. It was really nice!
I like the idea of shutting down ouellette in the early evenings and possibly sunday day like they do in other cities.
Problem with full time pedestrian malls is that since 1970 over 70% of them have failed and have been reopened to traffic.
Also Don your not considering that if Goyeau is already often closed and if it permanently closes for the tunnel plaza you have no North/south access to riverside drive for 5 blocks (McDougall,Goyeau, Ouellette, Pelissier ends at chatham, Victoria one way with a jog to ferry)
Pelissier has more potential for a pedestrian mall, but just closing a street does not make a public space, there has to be programming of it
I believe it’s the Sparks Street Mall in Ottawa and it is not very impressive. Do I think Windsor has a parking problem?? No! I drive in from LaSalle and I don’t think I have ever had any serious difficulty finding a decent spot … generally, a short walk and I am at my destination …. morning, afternoon, early evening or late evening … It’s just not a big deal to walk a bit … I lived in TO for a decade and guess what, nothing wrong with a bit of exercise!!!.
I don’t mind Oullette shut down on weekends when cars back up and spew exhaust … or, like grandprix weekend with extended patios and live music … I love that!!! But shut it down permanently … go to Ottawa and you will not be overly impressed.
Perception is the problem … it’s way easier … and cheaper to park in dtown Windsor than in most other cities i’ve been to … I personally don’t think that parking is even a major issue …
i lived in Ottawa before coming back to Windsor and after 4:30 PM you could bowl, skate board, scream on Sparks Street Mall and no one would stop you, there was nobody there to do so. Even some of the restaurants shut their doors at six! It is basically a place for civil servants to hang out for lunch and schmooze. Boring!
Anyone see this letter in todays Windsor Star? This is the attitude we must contend with in our bid to breathe some life back into downtown. Accurate protrayal of the parking situation in our core? Not quite. A motorist punishing an entire district for his innability to read a sign? Probably.
Something that must be addressed nonetheless? Absolutely.
Why Jim had to drive to the Downtown Residents Association meeting is beyond me. Most downtown residents would have walked. I think that is a very telling aspect of Jim’s whole exercise.
Guys like this are a dime a dozen. Judging by the tone of this letter he only attended the DRA meeting to stir up shit anyway, if that’s all it took to prompt a sarcastic letter to the editor threatening to abandon downtown over a justified parking ticket. If he parked illegally in downtown Toronto - assuming he found somewhere to park - he’d get a ticket there too. Why should the DWBIA and/or DRA be expected to cater to some peoples’ insatiable thirst for free parking in Windsor? I think going ahead with promoting an urban/walkable community is a far better use of their resources than trying to convince South Windsor SUV Guy there’s no such thing as free parking.
Personally sounds to me like someone trying to purposely discourage people to attend the DRA meetings and hinder the newly formed groups process. Seriously…who actually writes down which by-law the sign was saying was being enforced?
Just me thinking aloud though…could be wrong, it has been known to happen sometimes
Just wanted to add this to the discussion. Below is a piece of current research speaking to the issue of parking supply and pricing as it relates to Travel Demand Management. It comes from Jeffery Tumlin of Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates in the book Sustainable Urbansim.
These ideas seem to get at a strategy (or at least considerations) to address the root of the issue. Although most of it speaks to employment travel behaviour, these ideas can be used to address over parking by employees in the downtown to free up some space for visitors to the downtown and to encourage a lower number of cars on the road.
It is also worth mentioning that Traffic Demand Management (TDM) is only ONE issue to consider when looking at managing travel demand. The other issues include residential and employment density, diversity of land use types/mix of uses, walkable design, and access to regional destinations. It is also very interesting to note that parking pricing has a greater travel impact than all other TDM measures (density, parking supply and pricing, transit service, free transit passes, bicycle and pedestrian friendliness, parking standards, development approvals, analysis tools, and leadership) combined.
“Travel Demand Management
Parking Supply and Pricing
On the employment side, travel behaviour is less strongly correlated with density but very strongly correlated with parking policies. Institute of Transportation Engineers’ Parking Generation manual assumes that all travellers to an employment site will drive. Accommodating them with parking becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: abundant parking ensures that parking will be free, that adjacent uses will be farther away, and that transit’s market potential will decline. Provided that parking spillover can be managed, reducing the parking supply reduces incentives to drive and produces cost savings that can be invested in transportation alternatives.
Directly related to the supply of parking is the price of parking. Even in locations with little or no transit service, parking charges result in significant changes to motorist behaviour, if only to promote carpooling. In locations where direct parking charges are not politically acceptable, parking cash-out programs can achieve similar results. In cash-out programs, employees who do not drive are offered the cash value of the parking spaces given free to employees who do drive. Parking prices elasticities vary according to context but generally range from -0.1 to -0.3, that is, every 1 percent increase in parking prices results in a 0.1-0.3 percent decrease in parking demand. Parking cash-out programs are somewhat less effective than direct charges. Still, Don Shoup found that solo driving declined by 17 percent on average across several employment sites in the Los Angeles region that introduced parking cash-out.”
Gord Henderson Misses the mark. In his article he cites the parking garage non sale as preventing 1000 jobs.
so basically he confirms the intent was to remove the entire garage from public access.
Problem is that Windsor has no parking strategy other than as a cost/revenue generator
Mark, there is a policy on parking in Windsor …anywhere you can without paying for it.
All About Cities, Just into the newroom
Parking and cities
Few things can make a street feel less engaging and less safe than a parking lot or stand-alone parking garage.
In most cities, new buildings — whether private homes or office towers — must offer a certain amount of off street parking. But are those minimal standards too many in an era when transit, walking, cycling and overall less driving is becoming more common and even essential? Do parking spaces enhance or detract from a neighborhood? Probably depends on the neighborhood. There is increasing discussion on city and planning blogs as well as in the press about the relationship between parking and creating livable urban areas — or should I say the inverse relationship.
For many businesses and retail or restaurant entrepreneurs, something that frequently stops them getting their dream business open is city hall demanding more parking. The most ludicrous bylaw on parking I’ve heard is in Vancouver — and I doubt it is a-typical. If you want to open a restaurant that doesn’t serve alcohol, you do not need to provide parking. If you want to serve alcohol, you need to provide off street parking.
As reported via Planetizen on MSNBC there is an article describing how a number of planning departments in North America are starting to make exceptions.
Alice and Jeff Speck didn’t have a car and didn’t want one. But District of Columbia zoning regulations required them to carve out a place to park one at the house they were building.It would have eaten up precious space on their odd-shaped lot and marred the aesthetics of their neighborhood, dominated by historic row houses. The Specks succeeded in getting a waiver, even though it took nine months.
D.C. is now considering scrapping those requirements — part of a growing national trend. Officials hope that offering the freedom to forgo parking will lead to denser, more walkable, transit-friendly development.
Opponents say making parking more scarce will only make the city less hospitable.
Full article here:
http://allaboutcities.ca/parking-and-cities/
’50s-era parking gets urban rethinking
’50s-era parking gets urban rethinking
Will forgoing parking lead to transit-friendly development or headaches?
The Associated Press
updated 5:45 p.m. ET, Sat., Sept. 20, 2008
WASHINGTON - Alice and Jeff Speck didn’t have a car and didn’t want one. But District of Columbia zoning regulations required them to carve out a place to park one at the house they were building.
It would have eaten up precious space on their odd-shaped lot and marred the aesthetics of their neighborhood, dominated by historic row houses. The Specks succeeded in getting a waiver, even though it took nine months.
Like nearly all U.S. cities, D.C. has requirements for off-street parking. Whenever anything new is built — be it a single-family home, an apartment building, a store or a doctor’s office — a minimum number of parking spaces must be included. The spots at the curb don’t count: These must be in a garage, a surface lot or a driveway.
D.C. is now considering scrapping those requirements — part of a growing national trend. Officials hope that offering the freedom to forgo parking will lead to denser, more walkable, transit-friendly development.
Opponents say making parking more scarce will only make the city less hospitable. Commuters like Randy Michael of Catharpin, Va., complain they are already forced to circle for hours in some neighborhoods.
“Today I had an 11:30 meeting and I had to plan an extra hour just to park” said Michael, 49. It ended up taking him 40 minutes to find a metered spot.
Affecting a city’s look
Advocates counter that parking is about more than drivers’ convenience; it can profoundly affect the look and feel of a city.
“Do you want to look like San Francisco or Los Angeles?” asked Donald Shoup, an urban planning professor at UCLA and author of “The High Cost of Free Parking.” “New York or Phoenix?” (Shoup prefers San Francisco and New York — hard to park in but highly walkable.)
Parking requirements — known to planners as “parking minimums” — have been around since the 1950s. The theory is that if buildings don’t provide their own parking, too many drivers will try to park on neighborhood streets.
In practice, critics say, the requirements create an excess supply of parking, making it artificially cheap. That, the argument goes, encourages unnecessary driving and makes congestion worse. The standards also encourage people to build unsightly surface lots and garages instead of inviting storefronts and residential facades, they say. Walkers must dodge cars pulling in and out of driveways, and curb cuts eat up space that could otherwise be used for trees.
“Half the great buildings in America’s great cities would not be legal to build today under current land use codes,” said Jeff Speck, a planning consultant. “Every house on my block is illegal by current standards, particularly parking standards.”
Opponents also say the standards force developers to devote valuable land to parking, making housing more expensive.
Milwaukee, one of a small group of cities that has eased minimum parking requirements, did so because they were impeding redevelopment of struggling neighborhoods, said John Norquist, the city’s mayor from 1988 to 2004.
Norquist, who today heads the Chicago-based Congress for the New Urbanism, described a lot that sat vacant for decades after a historic building burned down. The required parking made it unfeasible to build anything new there, he said. After officials relaxed the parking requirement, a thriving restaurant sprang up.
Some cities have switched directions altogether, replacing the minimum requirement with a cap on the maximum allowable number of parking spaces. London and San Francisco began making the shift decades ago. San Francisco is currently considering extending the new approach to more neighborhoods.
Activists say too much parking is required even in New York City, particularly outside Manhattan. In August, a coalition of environmental groups said existing parking minimums would boost traffic and cancel out much of the expected improvements from the city’s green initiatives.
The D.C. proposal would eliminate minimum parking requirements with some exceptions. Caps on parking would also be established.
In old D.C. neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and Georgetown, where parking is scarce, opponents of the change fear that if new homes don’t provide off-street spots, competition for on-street parking will worsen.
Advocate: Create incentives not to drive
Ken Jarboe, a neighborhood leader from Capitol Hill, said the way to reduce traffic is to continue improving the transit system and to create incentives for people not to drive.
“Simply saying, ‘Let’s make it more painful to park’ — it doesn’t get you where you want to be,” Jarboe said.
But Harriet Tregoning, director of the D.C. Planning Department, said the city is already easy to navigate without a car. Nine out of 10 residents live within a quarter-mile of transit, and, according to census data, 12 percent of Washingtonians walk to work, Tregoning noted. More than a third of D.C. households don’t have a car.
The Specks say they haven’t regretted their decision to go car-free even after the birth of their son, Milo, in June. They walk to shops and parks in their neighborhood, and the baby’s pediatrician is a short bus ride away. When needed, they can rent vehicles from Zipcar, a car-sharing service.
Adding a garage and a driveway to their house would have forced them to sacrifice the equivalent of a bedroom and their garden. They decided it was worth spending the time to get a variance, especially since they were applying for several other zoning waivers at the same time.
For a developer, however, seeking a variance may not be an option.
“If you’re working off borrowed money, you’re not going to wait nine months,” Jeff Speck said.
As a result, developers of some recent D.C. projects have ended up with more parking than actually gets used, Tregoning said.
“We’re forcing people to invest in spaces for automobiles rather than in spaces for people,” she said. “There’s no way to recover that use.”
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26806628/
This article below is linked from the All About Cities above
Will forgoing parking lead to transit-friendly development or headaches?
The Associated Press
updated 5:45 p.m. ET, Sat., Sept. 20, 2008
WASHINGTON - Alice and Jeff Speck didn’t have a car and didn’t want one. But District of Columbia zoning regulations required them to carve out a place to park one at the house they were building.
It would have eaten up precious space on their odd-shaped lot and marred the aesthetics of their neighborhood, dominated by historic row houses. The Specks succeeded in getting a waiver, even though it took nine months.
Like nearly all U.S. cities, D.C. has requirements for off-street parking. Whenever anything new is built — be it a single-family home, an apartment building, a store or a doctor’s office — a minimum number of parking spaces must be included. The spots at the curb don’t count: These must be in a garage, a surface lot or a driveway.
D.C. is now considering scrapping those requirements — part of a growing national trend. Officials hope that offering the freedom to forgo parking will lead to denser, more walkable, transit-friendly development.
Opponents say making parking more scarce will only make the city less hospitable. Commuters like Randy Michael of Catharpin, Va., complain they are already forced to circle for hours in some neighborhoods.
“Today I had an 11:30 meeting and I had to plan an extra hour just to park” said Michael, 49. It ended up taking him 40 minutes to find a metered spot.
Affecting a city’s look
Advocates counter that parking is about more than drivers’ convenience; it can profoundly affect the look and feel of a city.
“Do you want to look like San Francisco or Los Angeles?” asked Donald Shoup, an urban planning professor at UCLA and author of “The High Cost of Free Parking.” “New York or Phoenix?” (Shoup prefers San Francisco and New York — hard to park in but highly walkable.)
Parking requirements — known to planners as “parking minimums” — have been around since the 1950s. The theory is that if buildings don’t provide their own parking, too many drivers will try to park on neighborhood streets.
In practice, critics say, the requirements create an excess supply of parking, making it artificially cheap. That, the argument goes, encourages unnecessary driving and makes congestion worse. The standards also encourage people to build unsightly surface lots and garages instead of inviting storefronts and residential facades, they say. Walkers must dodge cars pulling in and out of driveways, and curb cuts eat up space that could otherwise be used for trees.
“Half the great buildings in America’s great cities would not be legal to build today under current land use codes,” said Jeff Speck, a planning consultant. “Every house on my block is illegal by current standards, particularly parking standards.”
Opponents also say the standards force developers to devote valuable land to parking, making housing more expensive.
Milwaukee, one of a small group of cities that has eased minimum parking requirements, did so because they were impeding redevelopment of struggling neighborhoods, said John Norquist, the city’s mayor from 1988 to 2004.
Norquist, who today heads the Chicago-based Congress for the New Urbanism, described a lot that sat vacant for decades after a historic building burned down. The required parking made it unfeasible to build anything new there, he said. After officials relaxed the parking requirement, a thriving restaurant sprang up.
Some cities have switched directions altogether, replacing the minimum requirement with a cap on the maximum allowable number of parking spaces. London and San Francisco began making the shift decades ago. San Francisco is currently considering extending the new approach to more neighborhoods.
Activists say too much parking is required even in New York City, particularly outside Manhattan. In August, a coalition of environmental groups said existing parking minimums would boost traffic and cancel out much of the expected improvements from the city’s green initiatives.
The D.C. proposal would eliminate minimum parking requirements with some exceptions. Caps on parking would also be established.
In old D.C. neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and Georgetown, where parking is scarce, opponents of the change fear that if new homes don’t provide off-street spots, competition for on-street parking will worsen.
Advocate: Create incentives not to drive
Ken Jarboe, a neighborhood leader from Capitol Hill, said the way to reduce traffic is to continue improving the transit system and to create incentives for people not to drive.
“Simply saying, ‘Let’s make it more painful to park’ — it doesn’t get you where you want to be,” Jarboe said.
But Harriet Tregoning, director of the D.C. Planning Department, said the city is already easy to navigate without a car. Nine out of 10 residents live within a quarter-mile of transit, and, according to census data, 12 percent of Washingtonians walk to work, Tregoning noted. More than a third of D.C. households don’t have a car.
The Specks say they haven’t regretted their decision to go car-free even after the birth of their son, Milo, in June. They walk to shops and parks in their neighborhood, and the baby’s pediatrician is a short bus ride away. When needed, they can rent vehicles from Zipcar, a car-sharing service.
Adding a garage and a driveway to their house would have forced them to sacrifice the equivalent of a bedroom and their garden. They decided it was worth spending the time to get a variance, especially since they were applying for several other zoning waivers at the same time.
For a developer, however, seeking a variance may not be an option.
“If you’re working off borrowed money, you’re not going to wait nine months,” Jeff Speck said.
As a result, developers of some recent D.C. projects have ended up with more parking than actually gets used, Tregoning said.
“We’re forcing people to invest in spaces for automobiles rather than in spaces for people,” she said. “There’s no way to recover that use.”
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26806628/