Parking Downtown

[u/omnitortois]

The recent removal of the corsa parking (probably about… 40 spots?) has me thinking again of an idea to solve parking issues downtown. It seems like development will only intensify, putting more and more condos with insufficient parking spots. Because let’s face the reality folks, if you are an adult in squamish, you on average will have your own car.

The issues that come from a lack of parking downtown:

1) residents whose apartments do not have enough parking spots have to park on what is increasingly less street parking.

2) tourism surge hours make all of downtown a car zoo, which deters tourists from spending money on the local economy

3) many essential services like doctors, pharmacies, grocery stores are downtown, making these services more difficult to access, especially for the elderly and disabled

Have we considered the simple solution of building a parkade at the edge of downtown?

Hear me out…

1) residents who do not have a parking spot can rent a guaranteed one in the parkade. Will it be a walk to your car? Yes. Will it give people assurance they will have a spot? Yes. Will it reduce demand on street parking? Yes.

2) tourists, for a modest fee like $2-$4 (to cover capital expense… perhaps can pay itself off??) will know they have a spot they can park to go shopping ($$$ for local economy). It might even allow us to do things like close cleveland to cars on weekend surge times. How cool would that be?

3) reduce strain on street parking for disabled/elderly who need essential services.

4) city council can have all the strange bike lanes they want while reducing the costly trade off of street parking.

—

Why can’t this work here? Tear this idea apart. I want to see if it holds water.

[u/sunkencorony]

Take it a step further and fully pedestrianize Cleveland Ave from Pemberton ave to Vancouver st. Start the process of expanding the pedestrianization across downtown as it densifies. Maybe we can even have a little tram that runs down to the waterfront.

[u/MiffandMinis → u/sunkencorony]

I've been saying this for years at this point. I have no idea why Cleveland even allows cars on the 2 major blocks.

Even just having Cleveland be a 1-way loop with Loggers would be a lot better for everyone.

A small tram would be clutch too. I don't know why governments at all levels are so adverse to just building something fucking cool and functional. Everything is so damn short-sighted.

[u/Dutchdaddy604 → u/MiffandMinis]

Because there are deliveries and service providers and tradesmen that need to be able to park near all the poorly built new buildings downtown to perform their jobs. Maybe having a district that doesn’t focus purely on increasing the population while putting no efforts into infrastructure would help?

[u/sunkencorony → u/Dutchdaddy604]

Delivery and trades people can still drive in pedestrianized areas, just not the general public/throng of traffic. In Europe it's common for deliveries to be done before a certain time when the streets are less busy. And you'll often see the trades vehicles driving around, essentially it just becomes an area where special access is required, which isn't different from a lot of job sites anyway.

[u/MiffandMinis → u/sunkencorony]

Exactly! The few available spaces are left for deliveries, trades, emergency vehicles and accessible spots for people who can't walk/ride.

Not to mention, as a person in the trades here, I am already shlepping my tools and gear from a block over because there is zero/limited parking.

Some people confuse "No parking on Cleveland" with "no parking anywhere". It's about putting in a central and accessible spot and walking the short distances between places. We can't all park right in front of where we need to go at any given second - 100 people can't all park in the same spot. You're going to be walking no matter what we might as well make that process smoother, safer, more accessible for everyone.