Wednesday’s headlines

37 comments

1. I don’t suppose any fellow Spacers saw this “parade”? It sounds like the weirdest thing ever…

2. How does the city taxing citizens just for owning cars – regardless of how little they use them – encourage people to use their cars less?

   I guess in the same way that charging drivers who park their cars at TTC lots encourages them to get on the TTC more.

3. @Diana> A good starting point to figuring out some answers to your questions can be found here:

   http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/1884829988

4. Shawn, if you truly believe that anyone is going to spend $45.32 US to buy a book about parking just so they can argue the author’s opinions with you here means that you have little understanding of socio-economics.

   And this is very much an issue of socio-economics.

5. No Diane I did not expect you to buy the book, I simply wanted to point to the field of thought out there on this subject. If you google the title you’ll find many online discussion exploring the ideas in book and this subject, non of which cost $45.32US. Of course, as you point out, I know very little about socio-economics…

6. Shawn, can you summarize the author’s arguments for us?

7. No, I can’t Diane, no time. There was nothing combative in my post, I wasn’t challenging you — I was simply pointing out a big piece of literature on this that has some answers, because you asked for answers.

8. Then I’m sorry I apparently misunderstood your reason for posting.

9. It’s ok — the (often) combative nature of blog comments (though pretty friendly here) sometimes make everything seem like a challenge.

10. To paraphrase Elwood P. Dowd: “Nobody brings anything small into a comments thread.”

11. I borrowed it from the library, which continues to be free.

    The essential point is that parking is vastly underpriced, and thus heavily subsidized: we build our streets 33-50% larger than they need to be simply so to accommodate stationary vehicles. If people were called upon to actually pay the real price for their cars (through much higher parking and – wait for it – vehicle registration charges) we would get better land use and cityscapes through reduced car use.

12. McKingford, I guess I’d have to point out that we’re talking about public-owned parking used by the public. How can that be “vastly under-priced”? Indeed, like parks and other spaces, can it be priced at all?

13. @ diane

    yes it can be priced, simply because it is by far the most expensive part of the city’s budget after transit. over $300-million a year. At least on transit, the city recoups a fair amount of the cost of running (in Toronto 80%, the most of any transit network in the western world). If we charged for roads in the same way we do for transit the City (theoretically) would be flush with money.

14. My impression was always that there wasn’t any terribly advanced theory behind it. Yes, the city wanted a tax that was “pro-transit”, but they also wanted to implement it quickly. That ruled out more complicated schemes that would see more frequent drivers pay higher taxes than infrequent drivers.

15. At heart, this is part of an interesting policy debate.

    The entire TTC subway system was structured to be a long-distance hauler of commuters on a single-fare that basically meant city-dwellers taking short trips were subsidizing those coming in from the ends of the line. By definition this included those coming into the city on other buses and in private cars, so a lot of money went into free lots and terminal stations. This was a nice goal when the aim was to knit together the six boroughs and intensify development in the outer nodes that would feed downtown and I think all would say it worked pretty well in achieving this. Did it also get cars off of city streets? I don’t know the stats but maybe.

    Whether anyone realizes it or not, it seems that the policy now is now to turn the system towards more intensive, short-distance use within the now-unified, more developed city. Transit City should provide some of the missing links in the net, and the contrast between inside and outside the 416 will then be stark when it comes to public transit choices. However, it’s odd to hack away at the old commuter customer base without making the changes that will draw in city users to replace them. Take away the free commuter lots, sure, but then also impose fare zones, 2-hour tickets, intelligent streetcar operations, congestion road pricing and other measures to make the TTC a more attractive option for those taking short trips. If you don’t, you just kill off part of your customer base without doing anything to replace it, and those commuters will switch to driving into work, clogging the roads.

    If such wholesale changes are made, and we start milking the 905’ers (like DC or SF do to their distant commuters), will it backfire and cause jobs and housing to leave the city? I’m optimistic that it would work, if only it was 1985. It may be too late now in terms of numbers of demographics and jobs to pull off a “screw the suburbs” campaign, but then again other factors like gas prices and popular urban living might put things in the city’s favour. Very interesting topic.

16. molly,

    The 80% recovery is for operating expenses. Not capital. Furthermore the figure you quote is for roads, not parking.

    The Toronto Association of BIAs is also investigating whether Mall’s and Big Box stores are preferentially treated via property tax ……….

    “Current trends in retail have created a car culture lured by “acres of Free Parking”. Free parking puts public shopping streets at a great disadvantage and erodes neighbourhood shopping. The use of land for retail malls and big box stores with free parking encourages automobile use. The free parking areas are considered undeveloped land and not taxed appropriately. The property tax paid by this form of retail development is far less than a typical neighbourhood retail street of the same size. “

17. Cities need money? Then how about a $1 fee per day for each parking spot around those malls and offices in the suburbs? It would make developers think twice about placing working places far away from major transit routes and maybe help in the costs of the big infrastructure crunch that is coming to the suburbs. Ideally drivers would pay the real costs of driving freeing up money for a properly subsidized public transit system, one can always dream…

18. Designating spots as paid-for reserved spots, like GO does at $50/month with a six-month minimum commit, would be a heck of a lot smarter.

    Heck, they could even be creative about it.

    Designate the best 10% of spots as reserved spots, say. Auction them off eBay style at $50/mo/6min/24max. Depending on response, then designate the next 10%. Rinse. Repeat.

19. (uh, $50 reserve, that is. or else it’s no auction.)

20. Milking the 905ers might not work as planned as long as GO Transit exists to deliver them to downtown.

    Right now, for example, North eastern Mississauga residents find it cheaper to drive to a Bloor line subway station and take the TTC in. Once parking is no longer free, it becomes cheaper to drive to a GO station instead.

21. I heard one of the dumbest comments ever from Giambrone as to why they had to charge for use of the parking lots “people were buying MetroPasses just to use the lots”. Because obviously now that everyone will pay cash, people working in areas neighbouring the lots will now avoid the lot… The man is brilliant!

    It is rather funny to see all of the rabble rousing against developers and parking, but yet the mandated parking lots have been ignored. You can’t just change the rules on these things so quickly – capital investment is a long term process but people here want to change rules dramatically with no lead time.

    I do like road pricing though. Charge the full cost of operations and capital to road users. This will highlight the uselessness of city government and the egregious waste in administration. City should be fire, police, and parks. Privatise the roads,water, hydro, and TTC. Do NOTHING Else.

    Thanks to Spacng ad its radical communists for highlighting the futility of government provision of services and their immorality.

22. Since when telling people to pay the true costs of their lifestyle is being a communist? Most people here don’t think cars should be illegal, what they are proposing is to let the market dictate how much it will cost to use a car and let them pay for the real costs of parking, roads, accidents, environmental degradation, etc. That is actually capitalism to the extreme.

    There is nothing wrong with subsidies if they are used for the public good instead of private interests (such has subsidizing big oil). If everything were to be privatized then we would have a lot more greedy CEO’s and more Enron and Worldcoms happening in things like transportation, energy and infrastructure in which our economy and society depend on. Privatize roads? Why stop there? Let’s also privatize every school, hospital, and public space you can think of, it might lower your taxes in the short term but it will end up costing you more in the long term to maintain corporations’ constant needs of profit and growth.

    Get a grip, people here in Spacing are as much communist as you are a fascist. I am just happy that people who think like you are a small minority…

23. Diane – most people from the suburbs should probably should take GO, it’s a more efficient form of transportation for long-distances. Getting 905’ers to switch to GO will do a lot of good in reducing overcrowding on the TTC. Right now the Yonge line is pretty much at maximum capacity, so I think if any of these park-and-riders stopped taking the subway, other people would gladly take their places.

    Free metropass parking is really too good to be true, if you think about it. If parking is $6 a day, that’s $132 a month assuming 22 workdays. That’s a pretty big benefit for a relatively small number of people. The truly disadvantaged can’t afford cars, so wouldn’t it make more sense to drop the regular metropass price by a few dollars instead of giving free parking to those who can afford to have a car?

24. How can that be “vastly under-priced”? Indeed, like parks and other spaces, can it be priced at all?

    It *is* priced – that’s what parking meters do. The point is, it is *under* priced: one of the things Shoup references in The High Cost of Free Parking is that because curbside (ie. public) parking is so cheap, drivers circle endlessly in an attempt to find a curbside spot, causing considerable congestion (both from the extra cars driving around, and from driving slower than traffic).

    But why should curbside parking be cheaper than offroad (ie. private) lots? This is precisely backwards: curbside parking is the most desirable because it is usually most convenient – and so should be priced at a *premium*, much like just about anything else in life (the more desirable it is, the higher its cost). In short, the city prices curbside parking at a much lower rate than what the market would bear.

    Here’s another example of both how we wrongly prioritize cars over people and undercharge for parking. My residential parking permit costs $60 for 6 months, meaning the city is essentially renting my car almost 100 sq. feet of roadspace for $10/month. Imagine if some homeless guy pitched a tent on a residential parking spot? He’d be rousted in about 2 hours – even if he offered to pay twice as much as a residential permit cost.

    So yeah, there’s lots of room for the city to charge, and charge fairly, for the room it (foolishly) makes available for stationary cars.

25. By all means, suburbanites should use GO instead of TTC where possible — but I was under the impression that GO was considerably more expensive. Also, the GO network is a bit anemic compared to the dense, all-day rail nets around Chicago, Philly, Boston and New York. As the TTC densifies to better cover the city and its residents, GO should expand to better meet its suburban role. None of this is in conflict with charging for TTC lots.

26. GO Transit is not a viable option for all those 905ers now parking in TTC’s lots. It may be for those specifically headed for those locations (and times) serviced by GO. But many others are headed for locations nowhere near a GO site — or are travelling during times when there is no GO service.

    That said, I don’t see how TTC could continue to provide free parking, especially when this is a freebie which is primarily used by those who live outside the municipality of Toronto.

    I don’t like the idea of subsidizing parking. But I’m not against some form of parking subsidy if it means that people in the 905 area are cutting back substantially on their in-car travel. (And given the type of sprawling development that the province has allowed to take place in the GTA, I think some kind of parking subsidy is needed if we are really serious about cutting down in-car commuter times substantially and getting cars off the road.) But I don’t see why Toronto residents should be paying for this when it is a benefit for those in the 905.

    If some sort of parking subsidy is offered (and I think it has to be if we’re serious about getting cars off the road or reducing the time cars spend on the road), an appropriate funding model needs to be worked. TTC picking up the tab is not an appropriate funding model. I hope something is worked out because I don’t think anyone relishes the idea of commuters lengthening the in-car portion of their trip — either right to their destination, or (worse) to some Toronto neighborhood where they can find free parking and then quickly access the TTC.

27. But I don’t see why Toronto residents should be paying for this when it is a benefit for those in the 905.

    Toronto residents are at most paying for only a small part of this, and it is probably not of greatest benefit to those in the 905.

    On who pays: the TTC says its funding is 69% from fares; 23% from property tax; and 7.5% from provincial gas taxes (from, you know, the whole province). So your on-the-hook proportion is 23%.

    On who benefits: you’re talking about paying so that employers who locate in Toronto can have access to these people’s labour, and pay tax on the profits. I have no idea what the total corporate tax haul is, but it is certainly of more benefit to Toronto than it is to the 905 munis who would love to see those employers relocate there — and to the 905 employees who’d love a shorter commute, too.

28. There are no bigger crybabies than people who lose their free parking. It’s funny to see them twist and squirm to try and justify their freebie. Ironic that they are usually the “free-market” ideologues but if THEY are being subsidized then it’s gimme, gimme, gimme.

    And the vast mall parking lots need to be fully taxed NOW. How fair is it to the little ma & pa stores without free parking that they are actually subsidizing the megacorp competition?

29. Carl the problem with you comment;

    “Since when telling people to pay the true costs of their lifestyle is being a communist? Most people here don’t think cars should be illegal, what they are proposing is to let the market dictate how much it will cost to use a car and let them pay for the real costs of parking, roads, accidents, environmental degradation, etc. That is actually capitalism to the extreme. ”

    , is that it only applies to automobile use. Such singular examples are convenient for those whom benefit. What is usually missing when such things are proposed is extending this idea to all areas of city expenditures. Would you be willing to pay the actual cost of all municipal services? Are or you only willing to opt out of road expenses?

    http://southofsteeles.blogspot.com/2008/04/wow-what-difference.html

30. Glen, I am more than willing to pay the true costs of things like electricity, water or sewage. That would encourage conservation and increase efficiency. It would also free much needed funds to subsidize things that would make our city even more efficient and liveable, such as transit, schools and parks. There is nothing wrong with subsidization, as long as it is done in the correct priority and in things that will make us more equitable and competitive. Are cars more important to society that they should be subsidized over mass transit? I don’t know, maybe they are, but to me they are not…

31. And the vast mall parking lots need to be fully taxed NOW. How fair is it to the little ma & pa stores without free parking that they are actually subsidizing the megacorp competition?

    It’s very hard to understand what you are trying to argue.

    Is it that you believe that, unlike smaller stores, malls do not pay property tax on all of their property? (If so, I doubt that is true. They have made a business decision to allocate some of their property to parking, gambling that that will bring them more business. Their call.)

    Is it that you think we need to shift the basis for property taxation from value of the total property, to size of the horizontal lot, in order to incent property owners to use land more efficiently? (If so, I think that would be a good idea.)

    There are no bigger crybabies than people who lose their free parking. It’s funny to see them twist and squirm to try and justify their freebie.

    The “you big crybaby” argument is powerful but, shockingly, does not convince in the end.

    The point that many have been making is that, by creating a price incentive not to park at the subway, the TTC may be acting in a way that is counter to the goals we have for it — increasing transit ridership and taking cars off the road.

    If you disagree, you’ll need to come up with a better reason why than “wah wah wah”, I think.

32. Disparisun,
    Thanks for the break down — but I still don’t see why Torontonians should be paying for this. As your breakdown points out, the contribution that Toronto residents are paying for this free parking (used mainly by 905ers) will vary depending on whether they actually use the TTC. If they use the TTC (and the majority of TTC users are still Torontonians), they pay for this through their municipal taxes and through the fare box.

    I know this free parking was in place before the Harris years — but to me, this is another example of what it wrong with our current over-reliance on property taxes…a trend accelerated by the Harris era downloading and aggravated by McSquinty when rather than uploading some of the downloaded items, he merely gave Toronto more power to tax its own citizens (thereby continuing to shirk provincial responsibility). As the centre and most sizeable municipality within the province, Toronto provides a benefit (in terms of culture, social housing, community programs, etc.) that is drawn on by people across the GTA and even across the province. I’m not saying that Toronto should stop providing these things — but I think the share Toronto residents (through the property tax system and through some of the ‘new’ taxing powers given to Toronto) needs to be reduced/changed. The province has the power to change this by moving back to a system that is more fair and pays for some of these items out of income tax. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

33. As your breakdown points out, the contribution that Toronto residents are paying for this free parking (used mainly by 905ers) will vary depending on whether they actually use the TTC. If they use the TTC (and the majority of TTC users are still Torontonians), they pay for this through their municipal taxes and through the fare box.

    Now, that’s not fair. TTC customers pay the bulk of it, and that includes 416ers, 905ers, tourists, whoever; point is that it’s by dint of being a customer. Toronto residents as Toronto residents pay, like, 23% — and, to the extent they’re subsidizing people who live elsewhere to come into Toronto and work for tax-paying Toronto companies or hang out at revenue-generating Toronto tourist sites, surely that is a direct benefit to the Torontonians.

    Put another way: if you’re arguing for all these jobs to be transferred into 905 so that the people in 905 stay and work and play in 905 — then, believe me, I think it’s the City of Toronto who’d have a beef with that, not 905.

    Toronto provides a benefit (in terms of culture, social housing, community programs, etc.) that is drawn on by people across the GTA and even across the province.

    Yep. But when you talk about job commuters or university-goers or tourists coming into Toronto from 905, it’s the rest of the GTA that is providing a net benefit to Toronto, isn’t it? Certainly they’re all generating revenue for Toronto without using its social housing, community programs, schools, libraries, or any of the other things that all Torontonians subsidize for a few to use. Rather, their only non-revenue-generating activity is public transport, and even that is only minimally subsidized (23%) by Toronto.

34. Fyi, Disp, the mall parking lots are taxed at a considerably lower rate as “undeveloped land” as Glen pointed out higher up in this thread.

    Read the whole thread next time. But get some rest first.

35. Carl, I appreciate what you are saying but it is difficult to delineate if in fact automobile transport is being subsidised at all.

    Consider that the majority of households own a automobile. As such, besides property tax, they will also be paying income, sales, excise and other taxes, which are currently used towards roads. So drivers are paying for it already, just not directly. Of course this means that non drivers are also paying for it, but they also benefit from the subsides that drivers pay towards the Public Transit from the same general revenues.

    BTW I would up your dollar a day parking tax to $500.00 per year per spot minimum.

36. Disparishun
    “Now, that’s not fair. TTC customers pay the bulk of it, and that includes 416ers, 905ers, tourists, whoever;”
    Yeah, but the fact remains that the bulk of TTC customers are from Toronto (416). So the 416ers are paying the lion’s share of this benefit (that mostly seems to be for the benefit of 905ers) through their property taxes… and if they are TTC riders, also through the farebox.

    “But when you talk about job commuters or university-goers or tourists coming into Toronto from 905, it’s the rest of the GTA that is providing a net benefit to Toronto, isn’t it? Certainly they’re all generating revenue for Toronto without using its social housing, community programs, schools, libraries, or any of the other things that all Torontonians subsidize for a few to use.”
    When you look at the more complete picture, I would disagree that there is a net benefit to Toronto, especially when you consider that many of these surrounding municipalities have often tended to “export” (through lack of adequate supports) residents having economic and other difficulties. Take the example of social housing. For years, the surrounding municipalities have provided very little of this, leaving it for many families/individuals who fall on hard times to migrate to Toronto, where the social housing and other supports were more likely to be found. While the province was funding social housing, this may not have been such an issue in terms of the impact on Toronto property tax base…but now that this responsibility has been downloaded, that is certainly no longer the case.

    Because of the pattern of development that has happened in some of the surrounding municipalities (think Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Markham), these younger municipalities have gotten away with “cherrypicking” a more relatively affluent residential base and discouraging (through lack of affordable/social housing) the more economically challenged individuals from establishing themselves within their boundaries, thereby saving much of what it would cost to offer these supports within their own boundaries. Is this a benefit that Toronto is providing to the other municipalities in the GTA (and even further afield) at great cost to Torontonians? I’d say so.

    I’m certainly not saying we need to get rid of social housing (or even parking subsidies if they cut down on in-car use). But I don’t think the property tax base is the fairest way to fund these items.

37. Every parking spot has a fair market value. If you want to know what the true market value of a parking space that is near a subway is, I suggest you look at the privately owned lots run by private entities.

    Usually it is about $12 per day.

    The TTC has no business running parking lots at all. I say they sell the land and let the true price show.