Too many automobiles, and never sufficient driveway parking.
It’s turning into a serious downside in cities seeing a rise multi-generational properties, and better residential density.
St. Thomas, Ont. resident Brad Hansen presently has the difficulty of three autos in his residence, however not sufficient locations to park them.
“If we could park one of our vehicles on the boulevard and actually not get in trouble for doing it, it would take a lot of the cars off the road,” mentioned Hansen.
Come winter, he could be ticketed by town for parking on the road when snow elimination autos want to have the ability to plow the roads.
Town is now making an attempt to alleviate the issue by starting the Decrease Driveway Boulevard Parking Pilot Program.
“We thought it might provide some options to those residents that have parking issues, but also have boulevard space,” mentioned Kevin De Leebeeck, director of infrastructure and environmental companies with the Metropolis of St. Thomas.
St. Thomas residents might quickly be capable to park in a single day on their boulevard in winter to keep away from getting a ticket on metropolis streets (Brent Lale/ Ontario Chronicle London)
“We know new development is becoming more dense and we have multiple multi-generational families, and the housing units are smaller themselves, but everyone still has their vehicles. This is a potential solution to help alleviate those concerns.”
The purpose with boulevard parking is to keep away from automobiles hanging over the sidewalk which might create limitations for pedestrians, whereas additionally guaranteeing that parked autos keep off the street creating obstacles for site visitors.
Town of Cambridge had this program when De Leebeeck was their metropolis engineer.
“We had pretty good uptake,” he mentioned. “I think we had about 20 or 30 streets that up took this program right away. I could see the same thing, perhaps a smaller scale here.”
This two-year pilot program is restricted to a most of ten streets per 12 months and might be carried out on a street-by-street utility foundation.
The catch is the applicant should persuade 51 per cent of property homeowners alongside the road to sign up assist.
A Metropolis of St. Thomas diagram reveals an instance of the Decrease Boulevard Pilot Parking Program (Supply: Metropolis of St. Thomas)
“The first step is to gauge whether the rest of the street feels the same way as the applicant that’s organizing,” mentioned De Leebeeck. “The second process is for the city staff, to go out there to make sure – the biggest piece for us is making sure that the width of the boulevard, it satisfies the three meters.”
Whereas this parking program might work for a small share of residents with boulevards of the required dimension, others haven’t any resolution for winter parking issues.
“We don’t have boulevards, so we can’t apply for it, but for years, we’ve been trying to get them to do something about the parking,” mentioned Tanya Rawcliffe who lives on Schreyer Dr.
Rawcliffe lives on what town refers to as a tertiary avenue, and it hardly ever will get plowed in winter. Nevertheless, she nonetheless isn’t allowed to park on the road throughout snow season.
She is simply asking for just a little leeway from town, “When we put in our concrete driveway, we want to expand our driveway three feet over just to take up a little bit more space and have steps up, but they won’t let you because you have to have so much green space in your front yard,” mentioned Rawcliffe.
St. Thomas residents might quickly be capable to park in a single day on their boulevard in winter to keep away from getting a ticket on metropolis streets (Brent Lale/ Ontario Chronicle London)
She additionally mentioned that whereas she understands the road must be clear for snow elimination autos, with the dearth of snow the previous few years, she’d like to have the ability to both park on the road or broaden her driveway.
“There is no wiggle room to have any extra green space and to have extra driveway so we could park two cars beside each other.”
De Leebeeck understands her issues, however mentioned “We don’t necessarily have a full solution for those parking issues at this point in time, but we’re slowly making progress of where we can.”
Software kinds for this system may be discovered on the in a single day parking part of town web site.
