Toronto looking into permit system for overnight parking downtown

City staff are proposing implementing a permit parking expansion to close loopholes.

Thestar.com
March 16, 2018
By Julien Gignac

If you park your car on the street at night in downtown Toronto or East York, you may soon need to get a permit.

Currently, 60 per cent of residential streets - about 400 kilometres - utilize the permit system; the rest, about 235 kilometres, don't, said Kyp Perikleous, director of Transportation Services. This discrepancy is something community council may close.

The service is surveying streets that don't have permit parking in place to quantify potential spaces available. When this is completed, findings and recommended bylaw changes will be submitted in early 2019, Perikleous said.

"That way community council will have all the information in front of them and can decide whether or not this something they want to do," he said.

To start a permit parking program, residents put together a petition, signed with 25 per cent representation, Perikleous said, adding that a poll will be conducted to gauge the overall reaction to the plan.

"As long as 51 per cent of households on that street were in favour of it, then you go ahead with it," he said. "It's always been something initiated by the residents."

The permit parking system in the district collects about $11 million in revenue annually and an upgraded system could take in about $2 million more, he added.

There are three-hour parking restrictions for people who choose to park without a permit and drivers who go beyond this time frame would be written up if a complaint is lodged against them, Councillor Janet Davis said.

"People in huge sections of the district are parking overnight with no consequence," she said, adding consistent and fair parking laws should be applied across the city.

"The problem is that there is quite inequitable parking enforcement of the bylaws," she said, noting that "vigilant" enforcement gravitates towards areas where there are permits are in use. "The thing about on-street permit parking is you don't have to have it."

Councillor Joe Mihevc called the current parking system a "dog's breakfast," referring to its patchwork state, which causes visitors and even some residents to become confused by the rules.

The question, Mihevc continued, is whether the city wants to systematize the process in a more "coherent" way.

Having parking by permit in the whole district means "clear, singular rules, everywhere," he said. "There's not too many strong arguments against it, other than the people's desire to have their street as clear as possible of cars."

Mihevc spelled out that free overnight parking does not exist in the city.

"You either have overnight permit parking or it's the underlying bylaw," he said.

The rollout would occur in phases over "multiple years," starting in wards with the fewest streets requiring conversion, says a Transportation Services report from September 2017.

A public consultation process concerning the issue is slated to begin in the third week of April. Perikleous, the director of Transportation Services, said a public consultation group is currently firming up a time and place.