Cars park on Wells St. in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood in March, 2021.Fred Lum/the Globe and Mail
People can become emotionally entitled about the parking on their block: trying to reserve a space for future use, claiming ownership of the spot in front of their house, arguing that residents from the condo on the corner shouldn’t be allowed access to “their” parking.
This sense of claim is striking given how little people pay for the public land they believe belongs to them.
As every other aspect of city life becomes more expensive, street parking permits are about the best deal around. They amount to a sweetheart subsidy for motorists and are difficult to defend at a time when civic budgets are strained and political leaders say they want to discourage unnecessary driving.
Consider that a Torontonian with one vehicle and no parking on their own property can get a street permit for around $300 a year. Less than the price of one fancy coffee a week. In return they get to use a piece of public land about one-quarter the size of an average one-bedroom apartment in the city. Here’s the kicker: Based on average rents, the apartment costs 100 times as much as the parking spot.
Yes, apartments include amenities that parking spots do not. They have walls and running water, heat and electricity. They also offer exclusivity, unlike most street parking. But it’s still jarring that cities value the real estate on their roads so cheaply, even as the cost of other land soars.
Counterintuitively, cities often charge a premium for temporary permits. So if you ditch your car but occasionally still need to park a rental or borrowed vehicle – the kind of car-light lifestyle cities say they want people to be able to conveniently live – you pay up. If you own a car and park regularly, you get a great deal.
The bargain is even sweeter in some other Canadian cities. Calgary street parking permits cost a paltry $30 a year. An annual permit in Winnipeg goes for $50 and Halifax charges $75.
Another way to look at permit prices is to compare them with the cost of private storage. If a Toronto resident has a garage on their property, a permit to park on the street costs about $1,200 a year. If the person needs more space, they can put their car on the road and fill the garage with stuff, effectively buying a parking spot’s worth of storage for $100 a month.
The cost to rent a self-storage unit that size in central Toronto? About five times as much.
Cheap on-street residential parking is not an inevitable policy choice. Since the 1960s, Tokyo residents have had to prove they had off-street parking in order to register a car. In the Spanish city of Pontevedra, the long-time mayor argued memorably that it wasn’t his responsibility “to make sure you have a parking spot. It’s the same as if you bought a cow, or fridge, and then ask me where you’re going to put them.”
Lengthy waiting lists for permits in many cities suggest their prices have room to grow. Much as residents use less water as the per-litre cost rises, a gradual series of permit cost increases would reveal true demand.
This would free up space on the street for the people who really need it. Or it could be repurposed for other uses. The curb lane is a hot commodity in a crowded city. It can be turned into patio space or mini-parks. It can be used for quick stops by delivery drivers who would otherwise double-park, or fitted with traffic-calming infrastructure. In some cases, sidewalks can be widened.
Vancouver offers an example of first steps toward a smarter approach to pricing residential street parking.
City council voted in 2017 to implement new permit costs in the West End, a leafy and densely populated neighbourhood between the downtown and Stanley Park. Those who had a permit before the change are charged $132. New permits are priced around $450, which the city describes as the market rate. Low-income households pay the lower amount.
A scan of West End private parking offerings suggests such “market” city permits are still somewhat underpriced. But it’s a start. Advocates at the Parking Reform Network lauded the pricing change for helping to have “greatly eased the previous on-street parking problems and … increased the use of the existing off-street residential parking.”
Road space at the curb is a valuable public asset – and must be recognized as such. It doesn’t belong to cars. As cities move away from a constant focus on everyone always driving, giving this land cheaply to motorists is bad economics and bad politics.