The City of Montreal must stop “subsidizing” on-street parking, says the Regional Council for the Environment (CRE) of Montreal. In a “white paper” unveiled Monday, the organization argues that the City should price all parking spaces on the public domain, not only for environmental reasons, but also as a measure of fairness.
Nearly a third of households on the Island of Montreal do not own a car, and 31% of vehicles are generally parked on private land, at the owner’s expense. However, all taxpayers, through their property taxes or their rent, assume the cost of on-street parking spaces, whether they use them or not. “There is no reason for the municipality to subsidize the car of some when it lacks money for basic services to the population”, summarizes Blaise Rémillard, responsible for transport and urban planning at CRE from Montreal.
Based on several data, including the value of land in Montreal and construction costs, the CRE de Montreal estimates the average annual cost of an on-street parking space on the island at $1,275. In many areas of the Montreal agglomeration, residents must obtain a parking sticker if they want to be able to find a space more easily, but the cost of these stickers is much lower than the actual cost of parking spaces.
In Montreal, it is in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal that the first sticker is the most expensive, up to $269, followed closely by Ville-Marie. But they are even more expensive in the municipalities of Côte-Saint-Luc and Montreal West (up to $300). The costs go up again for the second sticker. On the other hand, in certain districts such as Saint-Léonard, LaSalle or Pierrefonds, the vignettes are free.
“For us, there is an inequity there, especially since in the context of the climate crisis, we want to reduce the use of the automobile. We need a lot of space to green the city, prepare for extreme heat waves and provide safer and better quality living environments,” said Mr. Rémillard.
point of contention
The white paper published Monday by the CRE de Montréal was developed as part of the work leading to the adoption of the new Urbanism and Mobility Plan for Montreal. The organization makes 23 proposals to make parking management more consistent. One of the recommendations suggests pricing all on-street parking spaces on a user-pay basis. This pricing could be implemented gradually by 2035, to coincide with the end of the sale of gasoline vehicles in Quebec. The revenue thus collected could be reallocated to services benefiting all citizens, suggests the CRE, which also proposes to eliminate underused parking spaces.
In Montreal, the 475,000 on-street parking spaces occupy 27% of the road, i.e. an area of 7 km2, underlines the CRE of Montreal. That’s 12 times more space devoted to parking than to lanes reserved for public transit and bicycles. For its part, off-street parking extends over the equivalent of 15.3 km2 with at least 470,000 places.
To achieve its objective of carbon neutrality in 2050 and reduce dependence on the car, it would be better for the City to aim for fairer pricing and the requalification of part of the parking spaces to allow facilities for active and public transport, and even for housing, believes the Montreal CRE.
However, some neighborhoods are disadvantaged and less well served by infrastructure for active and public transportation. In this context, the CRE de Montréal proposes to set up a support program for low-income households in the form of direct financial compensation.
Pricing should also take into account vehicle characteristics, such as space occupied, emissions and weight. These indicators could be associated with license plates.
The CRE also has some recommendations for off-street parking, such as the abolition of minimum parking ratios in real estate projects or measures to promote the pooling of parking lots.
Obstacles
Although the Plante administration welcomes the proposals of the CRE de Montréal with openness, it is not ready to apply pricing to all the parking spaces in the territory. “We are not there in the short term,” says Sophie Mauzerolle, responsible for transport and mobility on the executive committee. “For us, parking pricing is one of the levers of sustainable mobility, but it’s hard to ask people to make a modal shift, to abandon solo driving and put a financial burden on Montrealers if they don’t have no alternative. »
Montreal is more busy offering active and collective transportation services and promoting car sharing, said the elected official. The Sustainable Mobility Agency, which has the mandate to manage the issue of parking in Montreal, is working on several files, including the modulation of the price of parking meters on commercial arteries, the collection of more precise data on parking and automated reading plates. Several boroughs, including Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie and Ville-Marie, have also implemented a modulation of sticker prices according to the type of vehicle, she recalls. “But there are some interesting lines of thought [dans les recommandations du CRE] “, acknowledges M.me Mauzerolle.