Parking

My house only comes with one parking spot. I thought that I had better check to see how much a downtown spot costs for a month. To my surprise, a pass will only run about $50. For some reason, I thought it would be more expensive especially considering that it costs about $8/day around my house.

This is obviously a nuissance, but it means that it is still affordable for someone to rent a room and rent a parking spot. As a landlord, this is music to my ears. What is not music to my ears is the grumblings that have been happening at City Hall.

Recently, the City of Ottawa has had its share of budget trouble. The councilors are getting desperate for ways in order to raise revenue for the City. They are proposing to increase the number of parking meters in the city, raise the rates per hour, and reduce the number of hours of free parking.

For me, my largest concern is the number of hours that the City is planning to administer parking. Currently, there is free parking after 6pm on weeknights and free parking all weekend. I have no beef with the city increasing rates during business hours during the week. The role of the City in this case is to control the downtown traffic situation and the increase in rates will encourage people to avoid downtown during this time. Downtown in the morning is chaotic (in relative terms) and any relief to the congestion will make this a better city in which to live.

The reason I am opposed to the changing of the hours is the fact that the city does not provide adequate transit services on the weekends to justify charging extra on weekends. In addition, downtown is visited by tourists that want to see the likes of downtown and many of them are commuting in their vehicles. This parking ban would hurt business that rely on this weekend business.

For selfish reasons, I have just bought a house downtown and now my visitors may have to pay for parking. They will have to pay in order to visit me. I'm not going to have any visitors! I think it is retarded to make the city life less enjoyable by changing the hours of parking. This does not make sense to me for a few extra dollars. I'd rather pay a little extra in property taxes for the extra convenience.

Therefore, today, I contacted my local councilor and wrote him a nice little e-mail conveying my thoughts. I really hope that the city looks at other ways to make money other than changing the hours of parking. I can think of a few, and I can think of a few more reasons for why the hours should not change. I think the City is on the wrong path here, and I will pay close attention to who is voting against the parking and who is voting for.