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A few weeks ago, I had to rush downtown to National Capital Commission headquarters on Elgin Street, expecting to park in my old faithful, the World Exchange Plaza at Metcalfe and Queen streets. So handy.
The underground lot, which holds close to 1,100 cars, was full. No panic, no big deal, lots of time for plan B. Slip over to the National Arts Centre — oops, all 800 spots taken. Over the Rideau Canal to the Rideau Centre, now getting jittery. Full, all 1,666 spots. Back across the canal to Ottawa City Hall — every stinking spot taken, all 850.
Now I’m nearly late and hollering at the evil responsibles. It turned out OK — I needed the walk from St. Patrick’s Basilica, at Kent and Nepean streets. At the press event, everybody was squawking about parking, including my buddy Bruce, who said he actually drove downtown, couldn’t find a spot, drove home to Westboro and took a cab back, a double boomerang.
A few weeks later, it all happened again. All of which to ask: Are we seriously short of parking downtown? Why lately? Does anybody care? And what are we doing about it?
It is all well and good to say, “Boo-hoo Citizen man, cab it, bus it, stupid, get with the program,” but this misses the point. Surely, there is a public policy component to ensuring there is an adequate amount of parking in the central area on a regular weekday basis. If not, warn motorists to stay away, like we were London or Tokyo.
But, seriously, it is just impractical to ask certain kinds of business to be conducted in this town without using a car. (Like covering fires.)
Yet here is a snippet from the City of Ottawa’s long-term parking goals. “However, the City understands the importance for parking to remain available in urban areas. The City of Ottawa’s Municipal Parking Management Objectives include the following: 1. Provide and maintain an appropriate supply of affordable, secure, accessible, convenient, and appealing public parking.”
Asking for more downtown parking these days is like asking for more cancer. Nobody wants to discuss it, let alone promote it. Our massive investment in LRT is obviously intended to keep cars off the street, and our expansion of bicycle lanes to encourage this mode of non-motorized transit.
No issue there. I would encourage bicycle lanes wherever practical, including — when buses largely depart — on the reimagined Albert and Slater streets. But what of the thousands of cars? Is there adequate parking inventory to suit the needs of a working city? Doesn’t commerce matter?
Hard to know. The city is currently doing a “central area parking study”, so its numbers are a little dated and under revision. By last estimate, there are 11,172 spaces “off-street” in the central area — 2,540 east of the Canal and 8,632 to the west. Of the total, the city has seven of its own parking sites with 1,752 spaces.
One hardly needs a Sherlock to find clues to the current mystery. The large surface lot at Queen and Kent streets has been given over to LRT construction, the Laurier and O’Connor bike lanes ate up some spaces and the NAC is currently down 100 spots due to multi-year construction. The Elgin re-do, which will take two years, has already cut parking as well.
Portions of Queen have been beat up for so long, on the other hand, I forget if there was ever on-street parking there. No doubt there are lots of other losses in capacity here and there.
New builds don’t always help. The new Department of Finance building on Elgin, for instance, has no public parking, nor enough parking for a good portion of the staff.
The immediate impact of LRT is probably being overplayed too. Not only does the first leg end westerly at Tunney’s Pasture, but how does this help business-related travel when employees are nowhere near a station or in a big, jeezly hurry?
(The city is so worried about the problem, I couldn’t get a soul on the phone this week to talk about the issue.)
This is the future, one supposes: the city doesn’t particularly want you to use your car — downtown, maybe anywhere, the private sector has run out of places to park it, the economics of deep underground parking lots no longer make sense, and nobody but other motorists is interested in your whining.
First we paved paradise. Now we’ve shut up the parking lot.
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com.
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
查看原文...
The underground lot, which holds close to 1,100 cars, was full. No panic, no big deal, lots of time for plan B. Slip over to the National Arts Centre — oops, all 800 spots taken. Over the Rideau Canal to the Rideau Centre, now getting jittery. Full, all 1,666 spots. Back across the canal to Ottawa City Hall — every stinking spot taken, all 850.
Now I’m nearly late and hollering at the evil responsibles. It turned out OK — I needed the walk from St. Patrick’s Basilica, at Kent and Nepean streets. At the press event, everybody was squawking about parking, including my buddy Bruce, who said he actually drove downtown, couldn’t find a spot, drove home to Westboro and took a cab back, a double boomerang.
A few weeks later, it all happened again. All of which to ask: Are we seriously short of parking downtown? Why lately? Does anybody care? And what are we doing about it?
It is all well and good to say, “Boo-hoo Citizen man, cab it, bus it, stupid, get with the program,” but this misses the point. Surely, there is a public policy component to ensuring there is an adequate amount of parking in the central area on a regular weekday basis. If not, warn motorists to stay away, like we were London or Tokyo.
But, seriously, it is just impractical to ask certain kinds of business to be conducted in this town without using a car. (Like covering fires.)
Yet here is a snippet from the City of Ottawa’s long-term parking goals. “However, the City understands the importance for parking to remain available in urban areas. The City of Ottawa’s Municipal Parking Management Objectives include the following: 1. Provide and maintain an appropriate supply of affordable, secure, accessible, convenient, and appealing public parking.”
Asking for more downtown parking these days is like asking for more cancer. Nobody wants to discuss it, let alone promote it. Our massive investment in LRT is obviously intended to keep cars off the street, and our expansion of bicycle lanes to encourage this mode of non-motorized transit.
No issue there. I would encourage bicycle lanes wherever practical, including — when buses largely depart — on the reimagined Albert and Slater streets. But what of the thousands of cars? Is there adequate parking inventory to suit the needs of a working city? Doesn’t commerce matter?
Hard to know. The city is currently doing a “central area parking study”, so its numbers are a little dated and under revision. By last estimate, there are 11,172 spaces “off-street” in the central area — 2,540 east of the Canal and 8,632 to the west. Of the total, the city has seven of its own parking sites with 1,752 spaces.
One hardly needs a Sherlock to find clues to the current mystery. The large surface lot at Queen and Kent streets has been given over to LRT construction, the Laurier and O’Connor bike lanes ate up some spaces and the NAC is currently down 100 spots due to multi-year construction. The Elgin re-do, which will take two years, has already cut parking as well.
Portions of Queen have been beat up for so long, on the other hand, I forget if there was ever on-street parking there. No doubt there are lots of other losses in capacity here and there.
New builds don’t always help. The new Department of Finance building on Elgin, for instance, has no public parking, nor enough parking for a good portion of the staff.
The immediate impact of LRT is probably being overplayed too. Not only does the first leg end westerly at Tunney’s Pasture, but how does this help business-related travel when employees are nowhere near a station or in a big, jeezly hurry?
(The city is so worried about the problem, I couldn’t get a soul on the phone this week to talk about the issue.)
This is the future, one supposes: the city doesn’t particularly want you to use your car — downtown, maybe anywhere, the private sector has run out of places to park it, the economics of deep underground parking lots no longer make sense, and nobody but other motorists is interested in your whining.
First we paved paradise. Now we’ve shut up the parking lot.
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com.
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
查看原文...
