Parking Insanity

I was reading over the minutes of the latest public hearing in the City of Langley about a townhouse development and came across the following.

Councillor Hall noted that an Advisory Planning Commission member raised an issue regarding visitor parking. He suggested additional visitor parking may be possible in the southern part of the lot. Councillor Hall inquired about what the requirement is for visitor parking and the Director of Development Services and Economic Development noted that the application complies with the zoning bylaw. He further noted that the Advisory Planning Commission members considered the addition of more parking area however, decided that the enhanced landscaping was preferred.

This reminded me of when Langley was planning the spirit square and one councillor actually wanted to pave over a part of Douglas Park for parking. Insane!

Even with gas at $1.30+ a litre, parking is still the number one issue in Langley and people still feel that the more free parking, the better. Parking is expensive. In places like Langley, it costs on average $671 per year per space while in urban city centre like Vancouver is can cost $4,007 per year per space to provide. In Downtown Surrey and Vancouver, you can even buy places without parking to save money.

I still find it odd that businesses in Downtown Langley complained about the lack of parking and actually advocated for 3 hour free "customer" parking which as far as I can see is used for the employees and owners of said businesses. In reality, there should be one hour paid parking to allow turn-over of prime on-street parking spots and business owners and employees should be using the many empty off-street parking lots. Remember paid parking was invented by a business man.