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Isn't the parking lot in the rendering competition for the BRT? Will it still be FREE parking, which would discourage use of the BRT? Where's the medium or high density developments along the BRT? Will the posted speed limit for the roadway become 50 km/h, or will the same traffic lane width remain for the benefit of speeders doing 100+ km/h?
 

How the Twin Cities Abolished Parking Minimums (And How Your City Can, Too)​

The Twin Cities’ victory over mandatory parking minimums was won by smart, persistent organizing among advocates and well-informed electeds — and other large U.S. communities should be bold in considering similar policies, the architects of the reform say.

In a 6-1 city council vote, the city of St. Paul said it would “fully eliminate off-street parking minimums for real estate developments … modernizing [their] zoning codes and aligning them with best practices for land use while reducing administrative burdens for small businesses and developers.”

That seismic shift came on the heels of a similar announcement from sister city Minneapolis, whose own council unanimously voted in May to stop subsidizing the storage of private automobiles. The city had previously identified parking minimums as a barrier to achieving is goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2040 and committed to eliminating them at some point, but did not actually enact the ban city-wide until now.
With a combined population of nearly 725,000, the Twin Cities region is now the largest metro in the U.S. to introduce the progressive reform. The smaller communities of Buffalo and Hartford both made the move in 2017, and hundreds of other smaller municipalities have eliminated minimums in designated districts.

Here are four lessons on how they did it, from some of the advocates and city officials who were most instrumental in the effort.

Make parking policy personal

The residents of the Twin Cities didn’t simply wake up one day and decide that parking minimums needed to go. Instead, they were convinced by advocates that parking reform could be a useful tool in accomplishing a range of other community goals — especially when it came to ending climate change.

“You can approach parking reform from so many angles,” said Chris Meyer, an early proponent of the issue in the region. “Historic preservationists connect with it because of how it creates neighborhood character, affordable housing proponents like to talk about how it increases the housing supply, conservatives can make a market case for it…But in central cities like ours, the best angle to target is climate.”

Meyer was among the many Twin Cities advocates who recognized that the region’s greenhouse gas reduction goals simply couldn’t be met without addressing how free and cheap car storage incentivizes driving. With the help of then-council aide (now-Rep.) Ilhan Omar, he helped the 13 members of the Minneapolis City council to make that connection in 2015 when he gifted each of them a copy of Donald Shoup’s seminal book The High Cost of Free Parking — an easy self-described “stunt” that he encourages other advocates to borrow in their own towns.

(If your region’s campaign finance laws restricts you from giving gifts to candidates, Meyer recommends making yours to the council person’s office, rather than the elected him, her, or themself.)

Organize, organize, organize

Meyer’s Shoup stunt paid off, but achieving parking reform at scale had to wait.

After Minneapolis eliminated parking requirements in less-than-50-unit buildings within a half-mile radius of transit stations, advocates set their sights on a more far-reaching ban, this time leveraging an upcoming election to encourage candidates to put parking reform on their platforms.

Meyer himself was eventually elected to the Parks and Recreation board, which lead to a spot on the local planning commission, too. But he stresses that any advocate can use the campaign cycle to help propel big changes, whether or not she runs for office herself; the candidates he helped lobby as an election delegate, for instance, were instrumental in getting parking reform included in the city’s far-reaching climate action plan, Minneapolis 2040.

“The difference between 2015 and what we did in May is kind of like the difference between civil unions and marriage equality,” jokes Meyer. “We have enough transit in Minneapolis that most of the most substantial effects of [the policy] were already in place the first time around, but it still wasn’t good enough. We really wanted to establish the principle that we should not force people to build auto infrastructure against their will — period.”

Point to other cities’ success

Minneapolis’s incremental progress was frustrating, but it was progress — and in the meantime, it inspired its sister city speed up its own efforts.

St. Paul’s own parking reform advocates were quick to encourage their own electeds to follow the Mini-Apple’s lead and expand exemptions for parking requirements beyond the areas adjacent to city’s famous Green Line light rail stations, where the city had already eliminated minimums roughly a decade before.

City leaders say that policy succeeded in reducing parking at projects in that region almost 30 percent while encouraging a flurry of new development, but leaders had dragged their feet on instituting wider reforms.
 
They should replace the parking lots along or near the rapid transit routes with high density mixed development.
Most of Dundas is a bight in the first place and to change 40 plus year of poor planning in the city over night not going happen for at least 30 plus years. The area east of Dixie is class as employment land and that is a laugh,

You can have employment along the rail corridor with mixed use development in front of it with a nice street edge. Most of the northside backs onto low density homes and that will be an issue what gets built there to the street. More commercial than employment buildings as well the height of buildings. You are blocking my sun and the sky.

There was a plan to build a mall next to Harvey's that used to be a car dealership, but has die and in a legal fight. They started to work on the land only 2 years ago after sitting in limbo for over a number of years after the mall was approved only to fix it up for the next buyer.

Having HOT on the section from Dixie to 427 may kick start some proposed plans and work to get rid of the blight to the point that the Line 2 could be extended to Dixie on Dundas, not the rail corridor since that plan is dead.

Even between Dixie and Hurontario needs overhauling as well from Hurontario to 403.

Right now, most new development will be around the Hurontario LRT line with one underway, one started that should never happen that been dead for a few year, one on the other side of the street of this development and 3 more within 2 block of the LRT.

Quality of service for the BRT will determined what gets built and when, but ridership will drop starting at Hurontario with a big drop after Erindale Station Rd, other than those going to UTM.
 

Some of the presentation slides:

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* Comment on the above: Vehicle lane width seems excessive to me at 3.5M Trimmed to 3.0 and 3.5 would save 1.6M over the entire cross-section, enough to add trees/streetscaping to the side lacking it.

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Some of the presentation slides:

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* Comment on the above: Vehicle lane width seems excessive to me at 3.5M Trimmed to 3.0 and 3.5 would save 1.6M over the entire cross-section, enough to add trees/streetscaping to the side lacking it.

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And still cycle tracks beside the road instead of beside the sidewalk… sigh
 
And still cycle tracks beside the road instead of beside the sidewalk… sigh
I don't see the problem, the cycle track is 2m wide with plenty of room for passing and a safety edge.

What impresses me most is that Metrolinx never sacrificed the bike infrastructure and bus lanes, even in tighter areas.

Imagine if the City of Mississauga was leading this implementation, they would succumb to nimby's within minutes.
 
Thanks for sharing the preliminary plans. I know that there will be a need to acquire portions of certain properties in order to accommodate the expanded roadway, but looking at these plans, in some cases the proposed ROW goes through existing buildings (e.g. the commercial buildings at the southwest corner of Confederation Parkway and Dundas, and the residential building further west on the south side of Dundas, in addition to many more properties on both sides of Dundas to the east of Confederation Parkway. Is the expectation that the expropriation required to accommodate this project will necessitate the demolition of some of the properties that are too close to the existing roadway? I find it interesting that they have shown segments where a multi-use trail is planned (rather than a sidewalk and cycle track),presumably to mitigate the impact to the adjacent affected property, but in many other cases they show a sidewalk and/or cycle track going right through the existing buildings (perhaps there was insufficient space to avoid severe impacts to such properties even if a multi-use trail was used rather than the separate sidewalk and cycle track?). If such significant expropriation is required, I can envision how this project will be a catalyst for renovation of the Cooksville area in particular.
 
Will the Dundas Street Rapid Transit have snow removal, or just create snow windrows over the sidewalks and bicycle paths?
 
I don't see the problem, the cycle track is 2m wide with plenty of room for passing and a safety edge.
As wide as it is, it's still a "bicycle gutter". Cycle paths should be fully separated from road traffic.

If you have 2m to spare anyway, attach it to the sidewalk. Bicycle vs. pedestrian collisions tend to be less deadly than car vs. bicycle collisions, for what I hope are pretty obvious reasons.
 
And still cycle tracks beside the road instead of beside the sidewalk… sigh
As wide as it is, it's still a "bicycle gutter". Cycle paths should be fully separated from road traffic.

If you have 2m to spare anyway, attach it to the sidewalk. Bicycle vs. pedestrian collisions tend to be less deadly than car vs. bicycle collisions, for what I hope are pretty obvious reasons.

Perhaps I reading the drawings incorrectly, and/or there were some others I missed that showed something different; but when I look at the images above, the cycling facility is shown, to my read, as being as the same level as the sidewalk.

Is there something else being asked for here? Am I reading the render differently than you? Genuine question, no snark.
 
Perhaps I reading the drawings incorrectly, and/or there were some others I missed that showed something different; but when I look at the images above, the cycling facility is shown, to my read, as being as the same level as the sidewalk.

Is there something else being asked for here? Am I reading the render differently than you? Genuine question, no snark.
It does seem to be raised above traffic level. It does not seem to be leaving room for curbs (just my opinion) and I'm not sure whether I trust them to keep it snow-free during winter, or not to make it a gutter for cost savings. I would still prefer the pole zone to be between the road and the bike lanes.
 
It does seem to be raised above traffic level. It does not seem to be leaving room for curbs (just my opinion) and I'm not sure whether I trust them to keep it snow-free during winter, or not to make it a gutter for cost savings. I would still prefer the pole zone to be between the road and the bike lanes.

I assume they wanted to avoid the cost of wire burial/relo.

Unfortunate.
 

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