Akben-Marchand: Here's why visitor parking spots support a city's car-free lifestyle

Vehicle storage is not the highest and best use of scarce public right-of-ways. In a livable urban environment, space is needed for wide sidewalks, bicycle lanes, bus stops, benches, and trees.

Published Apr 29, 2024 • 2 minute read

Writer Charles Akben-Marchand says that visitor parking, such as seen here at the recent OCH Mosaïq development on Rochester St, is important for services that cater to car-free residents, and should continue to be required when the City overhauls its zoning by-law, even if resident parking will no longer be required. Assignment 140147 Staff photo Photo by Staff /Postmedia

When I was in university, I briefly worked as a security guard at a downtown condo. While every resident had their own parking space, many of which went unused, the 1970s towers weren’t built with any visitor parking spaces.

Over the years, management found about a dozen places where visiting vehicles could squeeze in, and even that was often not enough.

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This is because, until 2016, developers were not required to include visitor parking in new residential buildings downtown.

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Residents who moved into the first condo building on LeBreton Flats learned this the hard way. While many of them believed the development would include visitor parking, it was built without any. Their visitors must now park on the street.

Changes to the City’s minimum parking requirements in 2016 reintroduced minimum visitor parking, while reducing overall parking requirements.

On April 29, the City of Ottawa will table a report on a draft zoning bylaw which extends the 2016 reforms by eliminating minimum parking requirements for residents in developments citywide.

This will mean that developers with a high focus on transit and active transportation won’t be forced to build any more expensive parking spaces than the market requires — and hopefully, this will bring down the cost of units.

But the new bylaw will still include minimum visitor parking requirements, and that’s actually a good thing.

Believe it or not, visitor parking is consistent with a car-free lifestyle. That’s because these visitors are not one’s aunt coming over from out of town. They are service providers like cable and phone technicians, tradespeople, movers, deliverers, and personal support workers. Or even for the odd time you need to rent a car for the weekend.

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As society moves toward getting everything — from groceries to furniture to fast food — delivered, the cycling network expands, and public transit hopefully improves, it will continue to get easier to live without a private car.

After all, you can choose whether you live in a building with parking or not. By contrast, you can’t choose how services get delivered to you.

When private developments don’t provide space for these activities, the visitors’ vehicles end up parking on public streets (and sometimes, on the sidewalks!).

Downtown especially, vehicle storage is not the highest and best use of scarce public right-of-ways. In a livable urban environment, space is needed for wide sidewalks, bicycle lanes, bus stops, benches, and trees.

We can debate exactly how much visitor parking is required when a new residential tower is built, but at least some will be necessary to keep necessary “visitor” vehicles from being a public burden.

It won’t fix the parking situation for the current security guards at the downtown condo, but the parking rules in the City’s proposed new zoning bylaw will help reduce overall vehicle use, and that’s a good thing for our city.

Charles Akben-Marchand (centretown.blogspot.com) lives in Ottawa, rides a bike, and doesn’t own a car.

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