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Markham targets monster driveways
Proposed town bylaw would limit width
But move infuriates multi-car owners
Jun. 23, 2006. 05:46 AM
GAIL SWAINSON
STAFF REPORTER

In Markham — land of the monster home, where the car is king — a modest-sized driveway just doesn't cut it.

Some residents here want honkin' when it comes to their driveways, and they are laying down wall-to-wall interlocking brick, from the curb to the front door, to get it.

Not a blade of grass or a hydrangea in sight in some of these front yards. But what they lack in greenery, they make up for in parking spaces.

"It's sheer laziness, they just don't want to have to jockey cars around in their driveways," fumed Jim Matthews, who lives in the historic Markham village of Unionville.

Matthews has been complaining to the town for years about the jumbo-sized driveways that are threatening to swallow up his upscale neighbourhood, near 16th Ave. and Highway 404.

Now, officials of the town — which generally does not allow on-street parking in residential areas — are in the process of rewriting the parking rules to make it harder to expand driveways.

In April, council gave the second of three readings to a bylaw that would restrict the width of a driveway to no more than 1.5 metres wider than the garage door. A second option would give homeowners the right to have a maximum driveway width of 6.1 metres, providing that at least 40 per cent of the front yard comprises landscaping.

But the proposed bylaw did not exempt current oversized driveways, enraging parking-pad supporters.

In the meantime, council asked a citizens' working group to study the matter and report back, and a series of town hall meetings was held to canvass public opinion. Town council will next deal with the issue on Tuesday.

Many residents in the town of 250,000 are welcoming the more restrictive rules, but others, like Gerald Devins, say there is a whole other side to the story.

Devins told a Markham committee earlier this week that his family of four adults all have cars and they need an enlarged parking area to house them.

"Everyone around here relies on these expanded driveways," he said. "No one wants to talk about the legitimate parking needs of the residents."

In an interview yesterday, Devins said he spent a lot of money to have his home, near Bayview Ave. and John St., landscaped in an attractive fashion to accommodate more vehicles.

"As long as I am not harming anyone, I should be able to do what I want with my own property," an irate Devins said. "Is this Soviet Russia that we don't get to park our cars where we want?"

Opponents have demanded that residents who currently have front-yard parking pads be excluded from the bylaw, and that the town reject or limit parking restrictions. But supporters want tighter rules. At a committee meeting on Monday at Markham civic centre, the citizens' working group delivered a report outlining its recommendations. These included allowing all but the "worst offenders" to keep their driveway space.

But residents lined up to tell the committee that limiting parking does nothing to solve the problem of large families who have many vehicles.

"Surely there are issues more pressing to be dealt with," Eric Lerner told the committee. "This just baffles me."

The issue has also been controversial in Toronto, where a joint committee has supported new rules that will continue to block front-yard parking in the city core and most parts of the former suburbs.

Brampton prohibits parking in front yards and does not allow the width of a driveway to be more than half the width of the lot. The maximum driveway width in Mississauga ranges from 6 metres to 8.5 metres, based on lot size.

 

[EnviroTO]

Vehicle choices and driveway sizes should be entirely at the discretion of home owners. For example in my family of three adults each has their own vehicle, one transport truck and two Hummers and we need to park across the across the front of our property sideways in order to fit the vehicles onto the property. Also, we are too lazy to clean out the garage or build a shed for all the crap in the garage so none of our vehicles can park in the garage. In addition we value our privacy and security and have erected a 10 foot cinderblock wall around our property. How dare these politicians tell us what we can and can't do with our own property. >:

 

[scarberiankhatru]

I don't see why they can't fit more cars on the existing driveways - many streets in Markham don't have sidewalks.

 

[21stcenturymichael]

Vehicle choices and driveway sizes should be entirely at the discretion of home owners. For example in my family of three adults each has their own vehicle, one transport truck and two Hummers and we need to park across the across the front of our property sideways in order to fit the vehicles onto the property. Also, we are too lazy to clean out the garage or build a shed for all the crap in the garage so none of our vehicles can park in the garage. In addition we value our privacy and security and have erected a 10 foot cinderblock wall around our property. How dare these politicians tell us what we can and can't do with our own property.

Ha! It took me a second to realize this was satire...

 

[Mark Dowling]

one guy interviewed on telly said "where am I going to park" - the interviewer said - what about your garage, he replied, we have five cars...

 

[elook]

Front lawn parking is an issue that makes my blood boil. If you have more than two cars, don't buy a house with a single car garage, 'kay?

Off Rochefort Dr. near Eglinton and the DVP, there's a real nice little infill neighbourhood that's been ruined by front lawn parking. I'm not talking front pad parking, I'm talking front lawns. People literally have no room for the cars, so they drive up on the front lawn and park them.

The whole area looks like shite now.

Either the city should mandate proper parking facilities, or they should get out there and fine people who park on the lawns.

 

[Ed007Toronto]

That's hilarious. Post pictures if you can.

 

[adma]

I think this might be quite common out in places like Brampton, too--and strangely enough, it may be a laissez-faire "ethnic" thing, not unlike several families shacking up in the same household...

 

[scarberiankhatru]

^ That's exactly what's going on in Markham - five cars is not at all an unreasonable number for a household of 12 people. Markham pays a lot of lip service to stuff like smart growth and urban design, but do they really expect household sizes of 1-3 people when everything they're building is like 3000sq.ft.?

Some streets in Markham have bike lanes but no sidewalks, meaning no parking on the road. Other houses have three car garages but a driveway width of two cars, meaning some awkward jockeying is required. And the author's bias shows in the way she calls the 16th and the 404 area the "upscale, historic village of Unionville."

 

[Mark Dowling]

the guy on the tv was white and sounded like he had a south african accent fwiw...

 

[scarberiankhatru]

It's not worth much without knowing how many people over the age of 16 live in his house. "Coloured" people might be more likely to live en masse in extended clans, but they're also likely not going to be able to afford one car per person, while a white family might consume autos at that ratio. The South Africa comment opens up a whole new can of worms re: "are they or aren't they white" kind of like that Seinfeld episode where Elaine thought her boyfriend was black and he thought she was Hispanic and it turns out they're just a couple of white people.

If him and his wife have five cars for two people, then his complaining is completely unjustified (like, go live in Whitchurch-Stouffville where you can build a km-long driveway and a hangar for your cars) but if there's six adults living there, it's a different story (especially if the alternative is to split up the household and sprawl out onto a second property, which would be both expensive and would defeat the purpose of the proposed by-law).

 

[wonderboy905]

I have a detached house (2200 sq feet) with a single narrow driveway and single car garage. I can comfortably park 3 cars (1 in the garage, 2 on the driveway, one above the sidewalk and one below). By simply extending the lower half of the driveway enough to fit a small car in between the road and sidewalk is enough to assure that should the day come where we have a third car we'll never have to put one on the lawn itself or on the street overnight. The townhomes and semi's in my area are the same.

I don't know what the solution in Markham is but I remember we used to get tickets for parking on the lawn at my parents house in Mississauga (we breifly had 4 cars, my parents each had 1, I was 22 about to move out and my brother 25 temporarilly living back at home) but it sure wasn't a permanent situation. We ended up just leaving a car on the street overnight and the last person to bed would just roll it forward a foot or to... we never got tickets this way because if the tires were chalked it would no longer lineup with the markings. Before doing this my dad would go out with a bottle of windex and clean the chalk off his tires after they were marked, thankfully we only had to live like that for a few months.

 

[ahsun]

have a detached house (2200 sq feet) with a single narrow driveway and single car garage. I can comfortably park 3 cars (1 in the garage, 2 on the driveway, one above the sidewalk and one below). By simply extending the lower half of the driveway enough to fit a small car in between the road and sidewalk is enough to assure that should the day come where we have a third car we'll never have to put one on the lawn itself or on the street overnight. The townhomes and semi's in my area are the same.

Hate to break it to you but parking in that area between the road and the sidewalk is a no-no too. It's the street's ROW and belongs to the city / town.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

^ But on the many streets in Markham (surprisingly, even in some new developments) that don't have sidewalks, parking there is fine, which would lessen the need for all these driveway widenings.

 

[mark simpson]

"Either the city should mandate proper parking facilities, or they should get out there and fine people who park on the lawns. "

someone needs to complain first before they fine people