These green cars that you still have to park

Reaching GHG emissions targets requires reducing the number of vehicles on the road, whether they are gasoline … or not

Mathieu Perreault
Press

Stéphanie Gauthier’s clients often wanted parking with the condo they were buying. But in the last year, more and more of them are making it an absolute criterion, according to the Outremont real estate broker: they absolutely need to have a charger for their electric car.

“We have not yet had a transaction that fell due to the need for parking with a charger, but it is certain that this is an increasingly important question”, says M^me Gauthier.

This desire to have private parking to load your car collides with the movement to reduce the place of the car in central neighborhoods.

In 2018, the Plateau had experienced a psychodrama with a regulation prohibiting new parking in most alleys. Faced with citizens who were worried about not being able to transform part of their garden into a parking lot for their possible electric car, the mayor of the Plateau at the time, Luc Ferrandez, explained to Radio-Canada wanting to “promote the game, the trees and tranquility rather than car travel ”.

On the waves of 98.5 FM, Guy A. Lepage had said of the regulation that it was “totalitarian”. Councilor Marianne Giguère, for her part, qualified opponents of the settlement, during a public consultation, as “climate skeptics”, according to HuffPost.

Eventually, the bylaw was withdrawn in seven planned application areas. Approximately 40% of the lots overlooking alleys of the Plateau were then provided with parking, according to the borough.

According to Pierre-Olivier Pineau, climate economist at HEC Montreal, the Plateau is right to also want to limit the quantity of electric cars.

“If we replace the entire fleet with electric cars, it will be catastrophic,” said Mr. Pineau. To meet greenhouse gas emissions targets, we must reduce the number of cars and encourage people to get around on foot, by bike, by taxi and by car-sharing. The electric car promotes sprawl, and in Quebec, the fight against climate change, that means less sprawl, fewer single-family homes. ”

Live without a car?

Blaise Rémillard, responsible for transport and urban planning at the Montreal Regional Environment Council, believes that “to electrify dense neighborhoods, we must maximize off-street charging, but in commercial parking lots at night and in those of employers. “.

Does this mean that, in central neighborhoods, those who insist on having a car will no longer be welcome? “In new developments, the Lachine-Est eco-district, for example, we should really be able to do without a private car,” replies Mr. Rémillard. Elsewhere, we could reduce the number of stickers giving the right to park, to reallocate space for other uses, cycle paths, widening sidewalks, greening. But don’t think the message is, “If you want a car, get ready to move.” There will still be plenty of room for the car in town. ”

In the United States, organizations fighting against the presence of the automobile in the city, such as the Streetsblog site, particularly denounce subsidies for the installation of residential charging stations, because they benefit owners, who are already more fortunate than tenants. In Quebec, a $ 600 subsidy is offered for residential charging stations.

In Norway, no cars in the city center

In Norway, the country most advanced in the electric transition, the capital now prohibits the city center to all private cars, even electric ones. This is a perimeter that can be crossed in 15 minutes on foot, notes Sture Portvik, responsible for electric mobility at the City of Oslo.

“But it’s a relatively easy ban, because there aren’t a lot of people living in the no-go zone, a few thousand,” says Portvik. In the city as a whole, our goal is to reduce the number of private cars by 20% by 2025 compared to 2019. ”

And elsewhere in Norway? “Penetration is lower because the wages are lower and the cities are less dense,” says Portvik. The population in Norway is divided into three: one party that wants to ban individual cars as much as possible, another that wants to discourage individual cars, and another that insists on individual cars. I don’t know which faction will win. ”

Olso favors street charging stations rather than converting the electrical circuits of old buildings to install stations.

“We have less penetration of the electric car among tenants than among owners,” says Mr. Portvik. So we want to set up terminals on the street. People can plug their cars in while they shop or eat dinner, then come back and pick it up and park it elsewhere. ”

This scenario illustrates one of the problems of on-street terminals: you pay the charging rate for as long as you are parked there. “This is a priority issue for us,” explains Marco Viviani, vice-president of strategic development at Communauto.

“For the moment, we have to organize the loading of the cars by our volunteers. But if subscribers could leave cars parked on charging stations and we only pay for the electricity consumed, that would help the deployment of electric cars. ”