Put parking lot money toward transit, Toronto’s business lobby says

TheGlobeandMail.com
Sept. 14, 2016
By Oliver Moore

Enough with the parking, build more transit.

That’s the crux of a new call from Toronto’s business lobby, which is urging the city to put the brakes on building new public parking lots and direct that money into transit projects instead.

In a report due out Thursday morning, the Toronto Region Board of Trade makes the case for diverting about $30-million a year from the parking authority. The report argues that that amount, coupled with asset sales and more aggressive development of city lands, could be used to finance about $1-billion in new transit.

“I want to emphasize, [this] is cash that they’re holding,” said Brian Kelcey, the consultant who co-wrote the board report.

“In other words, if we stop using it for the purpose of parking expansion, and redirect all of that cash to public transit, that doesn’t hurt anybody’s budget ... there’s no point in the city’s operating budget that’s depending on that money.”

Toronto has a backlog of transportation infrastructure adding up to billions of dollars and is grappling at the same time with how to fund the next generation of transit. Mayor John Tory has said he would support some new source of revenue and has discussed the possibility of a hotel tax with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

A report on revenue-generating options is expected to come back to council this fall. Among the possibilities is a parking tax, which is very unpopular with many businesses. The board of trade proposal offers the prospect of wringing more money out of parking, without a levy that will hit malls and commercial buildings.

However, Lorne Persiko, head of the Toronto Parking Authority, said they can’t give up the money they’ve earmarked for expansion.

“We only grow in areas that need parking,” he said, citing the number of spaces being lost to factors such as condo development and new bicycle lanes. “There’s a lot of parking going out of commission ... we need to meet the demands of retail.”

In a briefing, Mr. Kelcey noted that Toronto already has the continent’s largest supply of publicly owned off-street parking.

“It’s not that anybody ... who gave advice on this said that parking is bad,” he said. “It was, given a choice between a public dollar going to even more parking, without having a tight business case around it, and a public dollar going to transit, which is facing serious capital challenges and you want to expand it, which are you going to pick, right?”

The report points out that there would be nothing to prevent the parking authority from continuing to expand its supply of lots, providing it can secure funding from a private partner, business improvement agency or other source.