New zoning code for Toronto’s largest city: “Council also adopted common parking standards, cutting up the city into five categories. New buildings that go up near subways or streetcars will now require fewer parking spaces than those that are far from rapid transit.”
The tragic thing is that this counts as a progressive, forward-thinking reform. Lower parking mandates near transit nodes! But why should there be any mandatory parking near mass transit stops? For that matter, why should there be any mandatory parking far from transit stops? Of course common sense says that if you’re building a house or an office far from mass transit you’re going to want some parking, but why not let the market decide how much is needed? And near transit this is even more pernicious. It’s entirely possible that the most economically efficient use of transit-adjacent land is to build some zero parking structures—to say nothing of ecological efficiency.
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