Quote:
Originally Posted by Corktowner
Honestly, when Hamiltonians start talking about parking I sometimes feel like I'm in the twilight zone. I've lived in a half-dozen Canadian cities, and Hamilton has by far the cheapest, easiest, and most plentiful parking—and it also has one of the most moribund downtowns. I can't even imagine how anyone could look at Hamilton and conclude, "The problem we need to worry about here is a looming parking shortage."
|
There won't be problems if we lose a few lots, that's not the concern.
The concern is that Downtown Hamilton has basically 0 commercial parking structures, and Hamilton just sold one of the few that do exist. That combined with the the rapid scale of intensification now coming into the downtown will eliminate the majority of parking in the downtown. Many areas of downtown are entirely serviced by surface parking lots right now.
That's a terrible thing that absolutely needs to be fixed, and thankfully is.
My concern is that as we move from downtown Hamilton being a giant parking crater to one with basically no surface parking, and this is happening very, very quickly right now, the problem may become the opposite. Instead of there being way too much parking, there will be none at all. And that reality seems to be coming increasingly rapidly, with another surface lot being sold off for development every few months. All of these new developments may have parking garages, sure, but they are mostly for building residents and are not available for the general public.
All I'm saying is that we have to be careful to ensure that in 10-15 years once all these lots are developed we aren't left with a downtown with no commercial parking around.
We don't need thousands of new spots, we don't need to make sure lost surface lots are replaced 1 for 1 with new underground spots - we just need to make sure that there are actually going to be some options to park in the core in 15 years when every surface lot is developed.
Again - even Toronto is chock full of commercial garages all across the downtown, even with 80-90% of people accessing the downtown using transit. Hamilton will never achieve an 80% modal share, no matter how hard it tries - even if we get up to a 60-70% active modal share, which would be a great achievement, we will still need places for people to put their vehicles.
It's not a problem now, but if every surface lot develops as I hope they do, it will be a problem. the solution can be a few commercial garages integrated into development like Cobalt is doing, plus maybe a new municipal garage or two around. It doesn't need to be new mega-garages with thousands of new spaces.
That's it. It's about finding balance. We absolutely want to encourage other modes, but we need to acknowledge that Hamilton as a mid-sized city in the North American context will need
some level of commercial parking availability. That doesn't mean we want everyone to drive downtown, that doesn't mean we should be offering dirt cheap parking in the city, it just means that we need to ensure that some level of parking is actually available for people. Like it or not businesses make decisions on this kind of thing, companies don't move offices to locations they don't think staff can access, etc.
In my office, located in downtown Hamilton, about 30% of staff do not live in the City of Hamilton and do not have the ability to take transit to the office, for example. No matter how much we make transit good in Hamilton, no matter how many bike lanes we put in, etc. - these people simply cannot and will never be able to access downtown without a car. That's a reality. We don't need people driving from the Delta, or even perhaps from Stoney Creek, but we can't realistically expect people who live in Guelph, Brantford, Caledonia, etc. to be accessing the downtown with non-automotive forms.
Prev
Linear Mode
