Quote:
Originally Posted by lio45
Almost no surface parking lots! That's pretty impressive.
I notice there's a big parking building (a few stories) in the middle of the pic (leftish side), which I suppose suffices to serve the entire downtown, a smart idea.
Does Victoria have other incentives and measures to make sure people won't want to keep parking lots, like special taxes, etc.?
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Not really, not tax incentives, no taxes - some would say an anti-car philosophy and a hippy attitude that cars are evil - but I'm ok with that.
There's four city owned multi storey parkades and one private one. The city is pondering building another as there are very few surface lots left. Since those pictures were taken there are nearly a dozen currently under construction or firm plans in place to remove them.
Why so few surface lots? The core of the old city was developed before the advent of the automobile for starters. For decades the city has always been in the top three in terms of real estate costs, and clearly the economics show you can make more money developing the land vs. parking income. Combined with the fact the the city has one if the not the highest walk, bike or bus to work rates in the country (due to small size of the region and weather) there is perhaps less need for parking than other cities.
New residential construction and office construction has been steadily eating away at the lots around the edges. Heck, here's an interesting example from a couple years back how any parking spot is being coveted.. here's a tiny lot wedged between a Salvation Army building and a hostel in a historic alley (you can see the original wood pavers from the horse carriage days in the first pic below, both from
VibrantVictoria)
End result was a generic 4 storey 7 unit condo building.
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