12-25-2017, 11:04 PM
(12-25-2017, 10:16 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:(12-25-2017, 09:10 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Kind to a small number of automobile drivers, not so kind to cyclists. Admittedly the number of cyclists is probably also small, but one parking user of the space uses much more space for much more time than a single bicycling user of the space.
I was thinking about this in the context of the Toronto King St. pilot project. It occurred to me that removing parking seems like a big move, but that is only because it is such an inefficient use of space. Moving back to Uptown, how many parking spaces have (supposedly, pending enforcement) been removed? I believe I recall that it was under 30 or so. So assuming people tend to park for a couple of hours each during a 12-hour portion of the day, we’ve removed maybe 200 people from parking each day. What would 200 bicycle riders per day look like? Not even noticeable — so one rider every few minutes are getting more use out of the former parking spaces than the people parking were.
It's not even "removing", it's just "moving", there's plenty of parking in uptown, 100% guaranteed there are 30 empty spaces at any given time, all these people need to do is go to one of the parking lots, then walk 3-4 minutes to their destination. There was a rather loud rant about how such an imposition would make it impossible for anyone to visit uptown, which is so ridiculous on face, it doesn't need rebuttal, but there are plenty of people with that attitude (these same people I have no doubt instead parked a 10 minute walk away from their destination at Conestoga Mall this winter, but I digress).
Good point. With the new lots recently opened there probably hasn’t been any net loss, just moving a small number of spaces a bit further away.
I read a strange article about Toronto’s King St. from a merchant who claims the place has basically turned into a ghost town. I don’t see how eliminating a tiny number of parking spaces and a small fraction of the through traffic from the street can have as bad an effect as he claims on business. On the other hand I’m concerned that maybe there is some non-obvious linkage that actually is leading to a problem. On one level his article makes no sense. For example, he claims that walk-in traffic is off. But walk-in traffic is pedestrian traffic, and the street is a better pedestrian street than before. But presumably he’s not making up his customer counts, so if those are down I’m worried. Maybe it just feels quieter because there isn’t as much traffic noise, and the space feels more open because there isn’t a line of parked cars.