HomeDiagramsDatabaseMapsForum About
     

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Regional Sections > Canada


Reply

 
Thread Tools Display Modes
     
     
  #1  
Old Posted Jun 24, 2020, 2:22 AM
Coldrsx's Avatar
Coldrsx Coldrsx is offline
Community Guy
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Canmore, AB
Posts: 66,638
Edmonton becomes the first major Canadian municipality to eliminate parking minimums

Edmonton first major Canadian municipality to eliminate parking minimums
June 23, 2020

Edmonton City Council voted to remove minimum parking requirements from Edmonton’s Zoning Bylaw at today’s Public Hearing. Effective July 2, 2020, developers, homeowners and businesses will be able to decide how much on-site parking to provide on their properties based on their particular operations, activities or lifestyle.

“Parking is a powerful, but often hidden, force that shapes how our communities are designed and influences every aspect of how people live, work and move around,” said Kim Petrin, Development Services Branch Manager, City of Edmonton. “Eliminating parking minimums delivers significant long-term benefits for Edmonton. It removes economic barriers to new homes and businesses, and improves choice and flexibility in how businesses and homeowners meet their parking needs. It also supports more diverse transportation options and climate resilience, and moves us closer to achieving the vibrant, walkable and compact city we heard Edmontonians want through public engagement for ConnectEdmonton and the draft City Plan".

On-site parking is expensive, running anywhere from $7,000 to $60,000 per stall. This cost gets passed down in the rent or mortgage Edmontonians pay, goods bought and services used. Removing minimums is a practical, fiscally responsible move that creates the possibility for a less auto-centric future.

This high cost of on-site parking has also created significant economic barriers to affordable housing development and the ability for new businesses to open in Edmonton. Eliminating parking minimums paves the way for more diverse, affordable housing choices, and walkable main street shopping areas and local amenities, such as neighbourhood coffee shops, that Edmontonians have told the City they want.

Removing parking minimums allows for businesses and homeowners to determine their parking needs and ensure they are met, making this approach more likely to result in the “right amount” of parking.

While the change will be transformative, it will be gradual. The new rules will only come into effect as homes and businesses are slowly developed or redeveloped across the city in the decades ahead.

Edmonton has a long history of allocating a disproportionate amount of space to parking amenities. This has led to a greater than 50 per cent oversupply of on-site parking city-wide, which will not disappear overnight.

These new Zoning Bylaw rules also enable opportunities for businesses and homeowners to share parking or lease out space to nearby properties, allowing for more efficient use of Edmonton’s existing oversupply of on-site parking. Allowing developments to share parking can also help ease potential on-street parking pressure in situations where an area may be experiencing a high rate of redevelopment. The City will monitor the impacts of shared parking and report back to Council in early 2021.

Under the new rules, barrier-free (accessible) parking will continue to be provided at rates comparable to today and bicycle parking requirements have increased. Maximum parking requirements have been retained downtown, and expanded in Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and main street areas, and design requirements for both surface and underground parking facilities have also been enhanced.


For more information:
edmonton.ca/makingspace

Media contact:
Karen Burgess
Communications Advisor
Communications and Engagement
780-496-4908
__________________
"The destructive effects of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building" - Jane Jacobs 1961ish

Wake me up when I can see skyscrapers
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #2  
Old Posted Jun 24, 2020, 12:27 PM
esquire's Avatar
esquire esquire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 37,483
This is a very positive step. It will be interesting to see how the situation unfolds in Edmonton over the upcoming years... if it goes smoothly, I could see it eventually becoming the norm across Canada.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #3  
Old Posted Jun 24, 2020, 3:01 PM
J.OT13's Avatar
J.OT13 J.OT13 is offline
Moderator
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Ottawa
Posts: 23,762
That's great. I wish we could do that as well, or at least drastically reduce the minimum.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #4  
Old Posted Jun 24, 2020, 3:18 PM
Echoes's Avatar
Echoes Echoes is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Saskatoon, SK
Posts: 4,230
This would be a dream come true. I'm hopeful to just see some deep cuts to minimums here over the next few years as the City of Saskatoon reviews its Zoning Bylaw. This past spring minimums were slashed for sites along the newly designated BRT corridors, which is an encouraging first small step. Saskatoon's downtown zone and its main street corridors (Broadway, 20th St, etc.) have not had parking minimums for decades.

Well done, Edmonton. The effects of this policy change will be transformational, and hopefully its effects are eventually felt nationwide.
__________________
SASKATOON PHOTO TOURS
2013: [Part I] [Part II] | [2014] | [2016] | [2022-23]
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #5  
Old Posted Jun 24, 2020, 3:24 PM
WhipperSnapper's Avatar
WhipperSnapper WhipperSnapper is offline
I am the law!
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Toronto+
Posts: 21,893
It's good news. I'm still a believer of minimum parking standards though. Their problem is that minimum standards in most cities reflect a time and place that simply doesn't exist in cities anymore. Policy is/has been dictating too much parking being built. We aren't at that stage to allow developers the freedom to expand no parking from the existing niche market. That's what developers will do. They will cut budgets and time frames in half if not more. Examples of communities with under built parking capacities exist even in Canada.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #6  
Old Posted Jun 24, 2020, 3:45 PM
Coldrsx's Avatar
Coldrsx Coldrsx is offline
Community Guy
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Canmore, AB
Posts: 66,638
Flexibility is key and now a commodity and choice for developers. You can make your development very attractive to some by providing parking or removing potential costs to you and your buyers by supplying less.
__________________
"The destructive effects of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building" - Jane Jacobs 1961ish

Wake me up when I can see skyscrapers
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #7  
Old Posted Jun 24, 2020, 4:12 PM
savevp savevp is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 781
Not surprising for a city advancing the way Edmonton has done the past few years. I've thought for a couple years (at least since Ice District launched) that Edmonton's CBD is growing/changing the most 'per capita' of any Canadian major city. What it is now is exponentially better than five years ago, and in five years, now will be a distant memory. Big up to Edmonton!
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #8  
Old Posted Jun 24, 2020, 4:19 PM
WhipperSnapper's Avatar
WhipperSnapper WhipperSnapper is offline
I am the law!
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Toronto+
Posts: 21,893
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coldrsx View Post
Flexibility is key and now a commodity and choice for developers. You can make your development very attractive to some by providing parking or removing potential costs to you and your buyers by supplying less.
Well, I don't trust developers or the market for that matter to make sound decision on supply and demand. Developers will build no parking as long as they can sell the units and there are always buyers. Understanding, Edmonton's buyers are different from Toronto. It doesn't mean it will always be that way.

The high minimums forced developers to include parking in the purchase price of units. That should have never happened. Parking should have been independently sold from the units. Developers should be allowed to bundle unsold parking units for monthly parking purposes. There are always people that are thrust into having a car and don't have a parking spot or want to own one.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #9  
Old Posted Jun 26, 2020, 3:54 PM
Kilgore Trout's Avatar
Kilgore Trout Kilgore Trout is offline
菠蘿油
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: hong kong / montreal
Posts: 6,131
Two Montreal boroughs got rid of minimum parking requirements in the past several years (the Plateau and the downtown Ville-Marie borough) and it's made a difference. There are many new towers downtown that have little to no parking, which means they can avoid digging an enormous underground garage, which speeds up construction and reduces costs.

Whenever I'm in Vancouver I am astonished at how much off-street parking there is. Every building has a big garage that is often half-empty. It has the perverse effect of making it a dense yet extremely car-friendly city, to the point where I have family, all of whom live in downtown condo buildings, who get around almost exclusively by car because there is always parking available wherever they need to go.

By contrast I live in a low-rise, traditionally urban Montreal neighbourhood that is less dense than downtown Vancouver, but only about 50 percent of the households on my block even own cars, and driving around our borough is useless because there's hardly anywhere to park.
__________________
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #10  
Old Posted Jun 26, 2020, 6:09 PM
Chadillaccc's Avatar
Chadillaccc Chadillaccc is offline
ARTchitecture
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Cala Ghearraidh
Posts: 22,842
This is great! I can’t wait til this happens city-wide here. We’ve had two substantial projects completed over the past several years with zero parking included, and a couple others with major relaxations. So hopefully that means we’re on course for city-wide eventually.
__________________
Strong & Free

Mohkínstsis — 1.6 million people at the Foothills of the Rocky Mountains, 400 high-rises, a 300-metre SE to NW climb, over 1000 kilometres of pathways, with 20% of the urban area as parkland.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #11  
Old Posted Jun 26, 2020, 6:17 PM
someone123's Avatar
someone123 someone123 is offline
hähnchenbrüstfiletstüc
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 33,673
Quote:
Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper View Post
Well, I don't trust developers or the market for that matter to make sound decision on supply and demand. Developers will build no parking as long as they can sell the units and there are always buyers. Understanding, Edmonton's buyers are different from Toronto. It doesn't mean it will always be that way.

The high minimums forced developers to include parking in the purchase price of units. That should have never happened. Parking should have been independently sold from the units. Developers should be allowed to bundle unsold parking units for monthly parking purposes. There are always people that are thrust into having a car and don't have a parking spot or want to own one.
I wonder how much of this problem is caused by free on-street parking and permit parking politics? That is a big market distortion.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #12  
Old Posted Jun 27, 2020, 1:18 AM
Peggerino's Avatar
Peggerino Peggerino is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2019
Location: Winnipeg
Posts: 232
I believe downtown Winnipeg also doesn't require parking in new developments. I'm excited to see how this impacts developments in non-CBD but densifying areas like Whyte Ave.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #13  
Old Posted Jun 27, 2020, 2:06 AM
Nouvellecosse's Avatar
Nouvellecosse Nouvellecosse is offline
Volatile Pacivist
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Nova Scotia
Posts: 8,968
Quote:
Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper View Post
Well, I don't trust developers or the market for that matter to make sound decision on supply and demand. Developers will build no parking as long as they can sell the units and there are always buyers. Understanding, Edmonton's buyers are different from Toronto. It doesn't mean it will always be that way.

The high minimums forced developers to include parking in the purchase price of units. That should have never happened. Parking should have been independently sold from the units. Developers should be allowed to bundle unsold parking units for monthly parking purposes. There are always people that are thrust into having a car and don't have a parking spot or want to own one.
If you think there will always be buyers, doesn't that prove the exact opposite point? That there's no need to even include parking because it isn't something that buyers care about? We may not "trust" developers, but in this case I'd say we should trust them over government bureaucrats because it's the developers who have big bucks on the line.

Personally I don't think that there's a huge market for parkingless properties yet and I suspect that many buyers will choose to buy a space along with the unit. But the key word is choose. I want anyone who doesn't want a parking space to be able to easily get a unit without the extra cost and for developers not to build any more spaces than they think they can sell. But given that building as many parking spaces as they can sell is a great way to make money and building more than they can sell fewer than needed to sell the suites will see them lose money, I trust them to do the right thing.
__________________
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw
Don't ask people not to debate a topic. Just stop making debatable assertions. Problem solved.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #14  
Old Posted Jun 27, 2020, 2:14 AM
Architype's Avatar
Architype Architype is online now
♒︎ Empirically Canadian
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: 🍁 Canada
Posts: 11,901
Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123 View Post
I wonder how much of this problem is caused by free on-street parking and permit parking politics? That is a big market distortion.
Some, no doubt, but permit parking is getting expensive as well. Anecdotally, I've noticed about 30% of private spots not being used in both free parking and permit parking areas, regardless of whether it is rental or a condo (most condos come with at least one spot). Most vacant spots seem to be due to car-less residents, or just an extra stall which isn't needed.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #15  
Old Posted Jun 27, 2020, 7:56 PM
manny_santos's Avatar
manny_santos manny_santos is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: New Westminster
Posts: 4,990
I like this in principle. But I do wonder, post-Covid, will as many urban people reject car ownership as was the case in the 2010s? I know myself I’m far less likely to use public transit now than before the pandemic, and I now value private car use far more than I did even six months ago.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #16  
Old Posted Jun 27, 2020, 8:09 PM
esquire's Avatar
esquire esquire is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 37,483
Quote:
Originally Posted by manny_santos View Post
I like this in principle. But I do wonder, post-Covid, will as many urban people reject car ownership as was the case in the 2010s? I know myself I’m far less likely to use public transit now than before the pandemic, and I now value private car use far more than I did even six months ago.
I find it hard to imagine a situation where this doesn't all have a significant impact on transit use. Obviously people with no practical alternative will have to continue using transit, but a lot of people with options (driving, walking, cycling, working from home) will shy away. The big question is whether it affects ridership by a small percentage, or by a more significant (say, 10% or more) margin.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #17  
Old Posted Jun 28, 2020, 4:17 PM
Hecate's Avatar
Hecate Hecate is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2016
Posts: 1,287
Developers should be able to do whatever they want... want to build apartments and offices with no windows... why not... the buyer can add them in after... windows can cost anywhere from... $500 to $100,000 dollars and those costs are often just passed on to the renters. Who needs electricity too... lol
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #18  
Old Posted Jun 28, 2020, 4:40 PM
whatnext whatnext is online now
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 21,995
Quote:
Originally Posted by manny_santos View Post
I like this in principle. But I do wonder, post-Covid, will as many urban people reject car ownership as was the case in the 2010s? I know myself I’m far less likely to use public transit now than before the pandemic, and I now value private car use far more than I did even six months ago.
Add to that many people will leave cramped downtown condos when you can only have two people in an elevator etc. Seems foolish to eliminate parking minimums when we are seemingly on the cusp of a car buying bounce.

...COVID-19 did have adverse effects on the city as well. A major casualty was the public transport system, which recorded a fast decline in ridership as well as frequency. The city reports that it is losing $10 million a month because of this and at one point consideredshutting down public transport in summer.

Public transport’s loss may just be car ridership’s gain. Cues can be drawn from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic, where private car sales shot up as lockdown measures eased in April. A large part of this is attributed to people feeling safer in private cars than in shared public transportation during a pandemic....


https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/...urban-planning

Having lived in areas that have seen adjacent multifamily development it is absolutely clear that cars from those new multifamily building spill onto the adjacent residential streets, even with parking minimums. People are to cheap to buy more than one spot because they can use the street for free.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #19  
Old Posted Jun 28, 2020, 6:59 PM
ssiguy ssiguy is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: White Rock BC
Posts: 10,634
Edmonton's rather aggressive urban transit plans are helping move these kind of parking limitations along. The reality is that people need mobility of one form or another and unless there is a truly VIABLE alternative, people automatically choose the car. A bus rolling by every half an hour doesn't cut the mustard.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #20  
Old Posted Jun 28, 2020, 10:44 PM
itom 987's Avatar
itom 987 itom 987 is offline
Moderator
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Edmonton
Posts: 5,046
I didn't know that mustard could be cut!
Reply With Quote
     
     
This discussion thread continues

Use the page links to the lower-right to go to the next page for additional posts
 
 
Reply

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Regional Sections > Canada
Forum Jump


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 4:37 AM.

     
SkyscraperPage.com - Archive - Privacy Statement - Top

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.