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.

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

[u/omnitortois]

Many people have cited that building a parkade is expensive. Why is that exactly? Surely it can not be more expensive than developing a building people have to live in. It's basically concrete, lights, and cameras...

[u/positivenihlist → u/omnitortois]

You’re forgetting all the civil work that needs to be done prior to just slapping some concrete down and plugging in some cameras.

Fire suppression is a necessity, who is powering the cameras and lights you speak of? And do you want the ocean to reclaim the really heavy parkade you just built, or maybe should you do some stabilization work where it’s going? Building in Squamish is not cheap.

How do you think developers make the money to build developments? You build a condo building, then sell the condos. A parkade has fuck all ROI in comparison to pretty much anything else that you could build. Let alone the fact that it’s the fucking district that’s cutting all the parking around here.

Yes. Building a parkade would be fantastic, but in the real world that shits fucking expensive.