Quote:
Originally Posted by Bunk
Are people aware of the origins of downtown Calgary's high parking rates?
It goes way back to the 1960s when the City decided to restict the amount of parking that could be built with new office construction. It started with a rather narrow area immediately around the main transit corridors through the core, but then has expanded to cover most of the downtown. The intent was to limit parking with the knowledge you couldn't forever expand the number of road lanes going in and out of downtown and attempting to get more people to use public transit. Extremely forward thinking for its time.
From this standpoint it has been one of the most successful public policies in the city's history. Yes, parking is really expensive, and certainly short term parking in particular needs addressing, but without it, would we have LA style freeways bisecting our downtown and surrounding neighbourhoods? What if the "downtown penetrator" freeways had been built - we would have a horribly ugly and unusable riverfront. Inglewood wouldn't exist. Chinatown obliterated.
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And that's all good, if transit was able to keep up with the extra demand. As it stands now I believe we're choking off access to the core because both parking and transit are basically saturated. And I don't want to see this city decentralized - I think it hurts labour mobility, amongst other things.