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General Urban Waterloo Updates and Rumours
There was a notice up a couple months ago for a land segmentation on that property. They seem to have both similar houses there. They want to keep the one in better shape, tear down the other one and segment the land from both. The notice called for adding both a SFH and a duplex. in addition to leaving the house at 14 George. I assume given the work being done that it was approved, but I didn't find any info on that in a quick search.
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Noticed that the block of townhomes at 133 Park (north west corner at Allen and Park) are for sale starting at 349,000 or 399,000 each; I cannot remember.
Everyone move to the back of the bus and we all get home faster.
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A couple are for sale, or the whole collective? Were these corporate-owned rentals until now, or what?
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I do not know and I do not know. There is a huge billboard out front advertising the sale that noticed a few weeks ago, but kept forgetting to post here.
Everyone move to the back of the bus and we all get home faster.
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It's a corporate-owned condominium. Units were rented to recover construction costs while waiting for the market to heat up. Now that it is (was) hot, they've decided to unload them.
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Progress continues on old Legion building:
   
Everyone move to the back of the bus and we all get home faster.
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Waterloo gets smart about parking

Quote:Waterloo’s getting smarter about parking.

The city will be signing a one-year agreement with the app Honk Mobile so people parking in uptown can buy more time via their smartphones. It will launch Sept. 1.

What do you think about this? And what does it mean for people without smartphones?
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(07-25-2017, 04:31 PM)timc Wrote: What do you think about this? And what does it mean for people without smartphones?

Seems fine if annoying to download every municipality's and park's vendor's app just to be able to pay for parking. In this case it's only being used to offer something the city hadn't offered before, so I'm not sure how it could be worse than not using it. If it takes off, presumably an app like this could also support an (expensive) physical pay machine, though it's not clear to me that there's a need to make every parking spot available to the vanishing population of people who drive and don't have internet-enabled smartphones.

That said, I'd much rather prefer a system in which you could pay by tapping in and tapping out with a contactless debit/credit card or a transit farecard.
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If all three cities in Waterloo Region were to use the same app it would be reasonable. Waterloo and Kitchener having different ones would be a pain.
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(07-26-2017, 10:13 AM)tomh009 Wrote: If all three cities in Waterloo Region were to use the same app it would be reasonable.  Waterloo and Kitchener having different ones would be a pain.

Don't forget the one parking lot owned by the region, plus GO Transit, Via Rail, and GRT, plus all four Libraries, and I'm sure the province, and feds have parking somewhere in the city.  Maybe some of these come under the same umbrella, but that's only public lots.  Generally, I think the biggest problem with parking is complexity and lack of awareness.
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(07-26-2017, 11:12 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: Generally, I think the biggest problem with parking is complexity and lack of awareness.

Yeah, it's really hard to tell what lots are free at what time of what days.

People have no idea how much free parking there is downtown.

One thing I noticed, was that the lot across the street from Charles St Terminal (the old post office/former college) still has high parking rates all through the evening, at a time when all other city lots are free. It's still assuming that there's demand for evening classes there. They really ought to re-evaluate that.
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(07-26-2017, 11:12 AM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(07-26-2017, 10:13 AM)tomh009 Wrote: If all three cities in Waterloo Region were to use the same app it would be reasonable.  Waterloo and Kitchener having different ones would be a pain.

Don't forget the one parking lot owned by the region, plus GO Transit, Via Rail, and GRT, plus all four Libraries, and I'm sure the province, and feds have parking somewhere in the city.  Maybe some of these come under the same umbrella, but that's only public lots.  Generally, I think the biggest problem with parking is complexity and lack of awareness.

Lump in 2 Universities and a college as well (Although Conestoga has been successfully using the Honk app for a couple years now)

Coke
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(07-25-2017, 04:31 PM)timc Wrote: Waterloo gets smart about parking

Quote:Waterloo’s getting smarter about parking.

The city will be signing a one-year agreement with the app Honk Mobile so people parking in uptown can buy more time via their smartphones. It will launch Sept. 1.

What do you think about this? And what does it mean for people without smartphones?

Oakville is using HONK for for parking at municipal parking lots in Downtown Oakville and Kerr Village.
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There will always be a segment of society that does not have access to a smart phone. A system that ignores that segment or, put another way, that requires a significant personal capital investment (phone and dataplan) in order to interact with a parking meter is a disservice to the public. Would it be too much to add parking meter payment capabilities to Presto?
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Not everyone will have Presto, either. But then not everyone has a car, either.

In any case, there is no reason why mobile payment and physical payment need to be mutually exclusive. Waterloo is only running a low-cost pilot at this point, though.
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