Charging stations for on-street parking get a boost in Toronto
The city’s licensing committee heard that tens of thousands of drivers without driveways can't join the EV "tidal wave."

TheStar.com
Oct. 18, 2017
David Rider

A pilot project to bring electric-vehicle charging stations to a handful of overnight on-street parking spots will quietly roll to city council.

Councillors on the public works committee on Wednesday endorsed the experiment, which will see 12 outlets installed on a half-dozen hydro poles in three city wards home to some of the biggest concentrations of electric vehicles.

If the one-year experiment is approved by full council, charging stations will appear in Ward 19 Trinity-Spadina, Ward 30 Toronto-Danforth, and Ward 32 Beaches-East York. Drivers will use credit cards to pay for overnight charging.

As of last year there were 1,600 electric vehicles in Toronto, a number expected to rise quickly. About 80 per cent are charged at owners’ homes.

Commercial charging stations, primarily downtown, help out the others but roughly 53,000 Torontonians with on-street parking, rather than driveways, are largely frozen out of the electric vehicle revolution sweeping much of the world, the committee heard.

James Scarrow, a Ward 24 resident who has ordered an electric vehicle, told councillors he was shocked to learn he can’t pay the city to install a charger for him within reach of on-street parking near his home.

“The EVs are here now and there is a tidal wave of EVs coming . . . ,” he said, suggesting the pilot project doesn’t do enough to prepare Toronto for the shift away from fossil-fuel transportation. “I’m pretty close to having to cancel a purchase of an electrical vehicle for this reason.”

The project would also see one station with two chargers outside Toronto Hydro’s facility at 500 Commissioners St.

And a previously approved, but delayed, downtown pilot project to put a total of five short-term chargers at Ed Mirvish Way, Wellington St. W. and Elizabeth St. is expected to go forward next month.

City-owned Toronto Hydro will fund installations. The city would pay $6,000 for signage and painted markings for the on-street overnight spots, and $40,000 for infrastructure to accommodate the short-term spots.

Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon, who would get some chargers in her Ward 32, welcomed the pilot but called the scope of it “pretty timid.”

Councillor Mike Layton, whose Ward 19 residents would also see chargers, said getting people out of cars altogether is best for the environment but, when people require a vehicle, electric is best.

“This is a shift that’s going on globally and we need to be part of it,” he said before the committee voted for approval with the caveat that, at all the spots, drivers must pay the electricity cost.

Councillor Stephen Holyday asked city staff about opportunities for private companies to help get power to on-street parkers, adding “I suspect there might be an opportunity for the city to make some money here.”

The lone vote in opposition was Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, who questioned gasoline-using drivers paying taxes that subsidize a tiny minority of EV users. His proposal, that users of the new charging stations bear all the costs of installation and operation, failed.