Well, just to add my two cents to the parking debate.
I can understand both Policy Wonk's and Wooster's points of view, however I can only speak from experience.
I grew up with one parent living in Sunnyside and the other in Parkdale. The Parkdale house was suited, with a one bedroom suite in the basement. I have to say that although the house was ten minutes walk from the hospital and the suite was only ever rented to med students, never in the 12 plus years the suite has been operational, have tenants occupied the suite who didn't have at least one car. Additionally, many tenants would have boyfriends/girlfriends basically living there full time (although they had their own place to live), who also had a vehicle. Often the tenants of the one bedroom would be occupying two spaces on the street (even with strict parking permit policies in effect-trust me there are ways to get around them
).
In Sunnyside, I always found that contrary to some expectations, the closer I would get on my walk to the train in the morning, the more cars there would be on the street. While this was probably due in part to the fact that there were several low-rise buildings just before the Heartland cafe strip, the fact remains that outside the apartments, there were no parking regulations and I know for a fact that people used to drive their cars into Sunnyside in the morning, park there and then take the train (to work/school/whatever). So whereas many would think that residential areas within a certain radius of the train should be relatively car-free, I haven't found that to be the case in many inner-city areas.
Knowing this to be the case and having lived it, I can see Policy Wonk's point of view. While I also agree with Wooster that the ideal is to create less of an auto-dependency than what Calgary currently has, maybe the method needs to be reconsidered. For whatever reason, people seem to need to still have at least one vehicle.
Personally, when I'm in Calgary, every weekend possible I like to head out to the mountains/go to a park with the dog/etc. and so no matter how close I am to the core or transit, I would likely require a vehicle, even if I only drove it twice a week. Those 104 days/year justify its existence. I certainly would like to see auto-dependency reduced, I'm just not sure that this is the way to go about it, because certainly I know that many suite owners if they don't have to create a parking space, won't and they likely won't enforce that the only tenants they have are ones that don't own vehicles....and if they do, there's a huge probability that the tenant will lie and say they don't have one and then just park a few blocks away (this has also happened with tenants who had 2 vehicles and said they only had one).
Even though it might seem unfair to mandate that each household have a parking space in inner-city communities, it seems to balance out or alleviate some of the problems currently created by people who definitely abuse the current system, even if it seems to punish those that abide by the rules and are working towards less auto-dependency.
I would love to hear alternative solutions to this problem...
I can only speak from experience and while I fully understand that many apartment dwellers do not need or have vehicles, the reality I've seen in inner-city areas has been radically different.
Ok, end rant because the parking debate seems to have quelled anyways. Darn time zone difference.
Even in Calgary, I have friends who grew up in Silver Springs like I did, drove all throughout university, and upon graduation with new jobs downtown moved to condos like Axxis in the west end, and Chocolate in the Beltline, or Bankview and gave up their cars. Maybe you hang around only "soulless suburban breeders" and no actual urbanites?
Linear Mode
