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Roads, Highways & Infrastructure

Here are the 2022 Residential On-Street Parking Fees in Toronto. I like that the fees increase if you have access to on-site parking, and for second/subsequent vehicles. ~$200/year for your first vehicle where you don't have access to on-site parking seems reasonable, and ~$650/year for a second/subsequent vehicle where you don't have access to on-site parking might be enough to convince more people to give up their second vehicle. ~$900/year certainly should be enough to convince those who have access to on-site parking to either make use of that on-site parking or get rid of their second/subsequent vehicles.

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Or just charge the same amount for everyone. Allocate only enough permits for 90% of available spots, block by block, and require others to pay by the hour. Adjust prices every month until each block achieves equilibrium.

I understand that people will then complain about new developments, but tenure does not ensure preferential rights to a public good unrelated to tenure.
 
Re: parking - I'd also love to see rates rated based on vehicle length. 13 ft cars vs. 16 ft full-size/vans/SUVs vs. 20 ft pick up trucks...and the bigger you go even more space is left between vehicles.

An average block might have 450 ft of available parking, so you could fit:
~30 small cars or ~24 full-size or ~18 trucks

Crazier yet, you could just about fit three 106" long smart cars for every 266" long F350 (when factoring space between cars/turning radius)
 
ByeByeBaby said:
It doesn't make any sense to me that residents of certain types of buildings (those lived in primarily by wealthier citizens) will get subsidized access to City space that is unavailable to those lived in primarily by the working class. If the demand for street parking exceeds the supply, increase the price. It's not rocket science. Yes multifamily buildings have onsite parking -- so do single family houses. The whiner in the news article lives in Mission; there are few SFD houses in Mission, but all the ones I can think of have a garage, a car port, a side-of-house parking lane, some sort of car storage on their land. They have no more need for on-street public car storage than the people in the multifamily buildings.

The only positive rationale I have for excluding multifamily from parking permits is it disables the NIMBY complaint about infill residents taking the (publicly owned) on-street parking. But were it me, I'd make it so that any CA opposition letter that mentioned parking went into the garbage automatically. Grow up; stop leaning on the public purse to provide private storage for your belongings.
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When I bought my 1912 SFH it only had on-street parking. So the first week I knocked down my alley fence and boom, 2 parking spots. It's not that hard.
 
I also wonder what impacts it may have on WB Bow Trail traffic, with a new light to allow the u-turn. Also, will it stay once the West Ring Road is open? I imagine the volume of traffic at Bow/Sarcee will be dramatically reduced when the ring road does open, and I think the portion from OBCR to 16th is set to open in 2023, with the rest in 2024, so shortly after this opens up.
 
MichaelS said:
I also wonder what impacts it may have on WB Bow Trail traffic, with a new light to allow the u-turn. Also, will it stay once the West Ring Road is open? I imagine the volume of traffic at Bow/Sarcee will be dramatically reduced when the ring road does open, and I think the portion from OBCR to 16th is set to open in 2023, with the rest in 2024, so shortly after this opens up.
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I didn't realize they're opening the west ring road in stages, seems somewhat odd. Especially since OBCR probably couldn't handle all that traffic
 
MichaelS said:
I also wonder what impacts it may have on WB Bow Trail traffic, with a new light to allow the u-turn. Also, will it stay once the West Ring Road is open? I imagine the volume of traffic at Bow/Sarcee will be dramatically reduced when the ring road does open, and I think the portion from OBCR to 16th is set to open in 2023, with the rest in 2024, so shortly after this opens up.
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It's a 3+min light cycle (at least at PM peak), so it's not hard to time this U-turn during WB Bow's 90 seconds of down time. It will also coincide with the pedestrian crossing lights (not sure if those are delayed to avoid interference with the main intersection?)

Urban Outdoorsman said:
I didn't realize they're opening the west ring road in stages, seems somewhat odd. Especially since OBCR probably couldn't handle all that traffic
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The southern section ran into some Enmax issues that really delayed things. I believe OBCR is part of that contract (with 16th upgrades and the 2nd bridge over the Bow each being separate contracts)...last time I checked it was unclear whether it might open earlier than the rest.

I think it would be a net gain (especially for Bow/Sarcee) to open OBCR asap (though there's probably no incentive to do so in the contract). Extra traffic would be dispersed among 69th/17th/Bow/85th, but I doubt it would be much faster as a through-route...so mostly traffic to/from the hill, taking a bit of pressure off Sarcee.
 
MichaelS said:
I also wonder what impacts it may have on WB Bow Trail traffic, with a new light to allow the u-turn. Also, will it stay once the West Ring Road is open? I imagine the volume of traffic at Bow/Sarcee will be dramatically reduced when the ring road does open, and I think the portion from OBCR to 16th is set to open in 2023, with the rest in 2024, so shortly after this opens up.
Click to expand...
The first rule of road capacity planning is never reduce capacity under any circumstances, for any reason. If you need to justify over-building road infrastructure just stretch out the timeline and increase the trip generation rate from all the extra circulation options you invented until any road investment looks worth it in the long run.

It's a small investment, solves a short-term problem, but completely illogical investment after the ring road opens.

That's the problem with highways - no investment is enough and each investment justifies the next one. You'd think de-bottlenecking the top of the hill with a multi-billion dollar 10 lane ring road would would quash this kind of project as "unnecessary". I am sure Bow / Sarcee interchange will still be proposed in the near future despite incredible capacity investments everywhere nearby.
 
Once WRR opens I'd love to see Sarcee re-designated from a skeletal road to a 'parkway' (improve inter-community connections and better access for more people to Greenway, Edworthy). The sell to petro-sexuals is that Bow and Sarcee would each increase to 50% straight-through green time as you disperse the turn movements:

- current EB-NB turn lanes go straight through intersection into current WB-SB turn lanes (and extended a bit further to where this new U-turn will be)
- pedestrian crossing + dual U-turn lights near Broadcast Hill Community Centre/Edworthy Dog Run
- pedestrian crossing + dual U-turn lights just north of 7 Ave SW at the triangular plot with a playground
- current Sarcee turn lanes converted to additional through-lane each way
- reduce to 60 kph limit on Sarcee (would actually help with intersection throughput, while pushing more people to Stoney)

Reasonable improvement to the main intersection, but not so much as to induce demand or simply relocate the bottleneck(s) as an interchange would. Sarcee remains an effective arterial for the area, but Stoney/Crowchild would become the obvious choice for longer trips. Fairly cheap overall and can be built with minimal disruption to existing infrastructure (substation, power towers, light poles, etc.)...the U-turn locations on Sarcee are actually surprisingly flat in those particular spots (though the median at the southern/Westgate one would need a bit of grading)

WB-SB has the lowest volume of all the movements - it would require a 'weave' where drivers exit onto NB Sarcee and have to get over another lane or two for the U-turn, but I think there is plenty of space to design for that (dual exit lane; right is a through-lane, left side yields/merges with Sarcee

This would open the door for a lot of long-term MUP connections, but a big miss right now is another E-W cycling corridor north of 26 Ave. Spruce Drive is good, but Quarry Rd Tr or Edworthy Rd aren't great options for everyone. 14/15 Ave seems like the natural choice (especially as Westbrook redevelops). Both Bow and 17th are actually pretty unpleasant and indirect routes to cross Sarcee for most users.
 
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