By Pepper Parr
October 22, 2105
BURLINGTON, ON
The photograph shown in an earlier version of this story was the wrong building. The photograph shown now is of the Aldershot branch of the Public Library. Our apologies and thank you to the reader who pointed out the error to us.
While he might be a little on the brittle side and a sense of humour is not the dominant part of his personality – ward 1 Councillor Rick Craven usually finds the facts that makes the point and drives it home.
Rick Craven: Best committee chair the city has; not big on the warm fuzzy stuff through. Needs a hug badly.
The library works for the public; the library parking lot doesn’t work all that well – which doesn’t bother the ward council member – he wants people to get out of their cars and walk as much as they can.
Parking and transit at times dominate discussion in this city – usually in the form of complaints.
Getting people out of their cars and walking the short distances to services they use has been a consistent thread through all the Strategic Plan debates. Councillor Craven explained how it has been made to work in his ward.
The new city library in Aldershot is part of a mixed use structure that works quite well. Parking is at the rear of the building, there is retail and services on the ground levels and the library.
People will complain about the lack of parking said Councillor Craven adding that the library is a very short walk for thousands of residents. Complaints about the lack of parking – there are 24 parking spaces at the rear of the building at Plans Road and Waterdown.
Craven makes a very solid point when he said that library registration is up by more than 400%.
It is a new library – so all it could do was grow – and if Craven’s numbers are right – the lack of parking space has not hurt library usage – and it has gotten people out of their cars.
A candidate in the municipal election didn’t see it quite the same way – he complained loudly that there wasn’t nearly enough parking and that it was difficult for his wife to get to the library pushing a three year old in a stroller.
It is going to take the city some time to break the “use the car” habit.
I don’t think the parking is as big an issue as some are making it out to be. The purpose of a community library like the one in Aldershot is to serve those in the nearby community.
If people are coming to the library by car, they not only have the option of going to Aldershot, but also can go without much difficulty to any of the other libraries in the city (e.g. Central), which have considerably more parking spaces available. Those coming on foot do not have that option.
Everything does not have to revolve around the needs of the car. Most of the city does so, while Aldershot and much of Downtown Burlington are unique in having more balance between the car and other modes of travel.
People offer premium prices to live in walkable mixed-use neighbourhoods like these, because there is much greater demand than supply of these attributes in the GTA. However that means providing parking can be costly, and in many cases can act to the detriment of the things that make a neighbourhood an attractive place to live and do business. Do we really expect that everything we do must fit into the big-box drive-through model that dominates the rest of the city?
The 400% increase in library registration should be taken as evidence that the Aldershot community model is working well in terms of having more people in Aldershot served by the library.
I tend to agree that too much is made on parking issues, and the CAR. To be fair to Craven, I do recall him pointing out, as I did above, that there are a lot of side streets with parking and just a little walk to the Library.
But it’s easy to see at Costco, for example, that some people want and wait for the closest crowded spot when there are hundreds not too many steps away near to the back. They won’t walk.
We can’t supply enough for these folks and should not try.
We walk about 80% of the time when our destination is in Aldershot. But the walk can be a long time, 30 to 50 minutes one-way in the area from Waterdown Rd to Mapleview, and then the return trip is the same.
I’m not sure how many people can or will do that. My concern is for those that cannot walk to the Library, and therefore lose access.
Side street parking is not a sensible alternative as the streets in question have no sidewalks. I’m not sure we should turn our communities into parking lots. E.G Let the developer put in too little parking – then turn the area in front of some one house into a parking lot.
I’m all for alternative transportation, but the reality is that if you are a business even if you imagine 25% non-car trips in 25 years – which would be an massive switch – then for the next 25 years 75 percent of your customers are coming by car. Stripping the area of parking is making all of Aldershot commercially worthless.
Businesses need access to customers and I can’t magically get hundreds of thousands to decide that they have time to spend hours getting a library book, groceries , etc. You need to keep the parking and ADD IN alternatives modes of transport. Removing parking and snarling traffic will simply drive every business bankrupt – practically no business can only cater to the local population – you need to cater to a large mass of people.
I agree with you in general – I was really only talking about the library example specifically, as that was what started this conversation.
Business needs parking!!
The data you present is pretty convincing, yet again, that whether we like it or not, we are car dependent pretty much forever around here, so if we want commercial to be viable then we better provide the parking at the planning stage paid for by the developer.
And I note again your point made several times previously that Aldershot is being decommercialized. I agree.
I think part of the answer is to not force the developer to add in more parking than what the market actually requires. This is the norm currently in Burlington.
Because of the added cost in a high-land value community like Aldershot, having large amounts of capital tied up in parking lots that aren’t utilized is very inefficient for businesses. Businesses can then supply the parking their customers need, while minimizing the parking lots’ negative effect on the neighbourhood.
We need to change those parking minimums to parking maximums, or at the very least, remove the minimums and let businesses and developers in a free market decide how much parking is required. At the same time, we need to ensure that businesses do not try to cut corners by relying on community resources (e.g. on-street parking) to handle the parking needs of their customers.
There is no magic bullet – car-oriented businesses in Aldershot have to compete with car-oriented businesses in other parts of the city where sprawl is fully entrenched and land prices / rents are lower. There are lots of strip malls elsewhere in Burlington that are begging for tenants. The city certainly doesn’t need more. The high cost of land makes it tough for them to set up in that format in Aldershot or Downtown. And if businesses can’t attract enough customers from the local area to be viable in a less car-oriented format, they won’t be able to stay in the community. If residents want to see local business succeed and grow, it will likely be up to the residents to make it work organically as density and population increase over time. They may have to go a bit out of their way to ensure these businesses can thrive. That will take a long time to build up, and we will likely see a lot of turnover and failures in the interim.
I certainly don’t see a major grocery chain in the standard big-box format working in Aldershot in the current market. Maybe if the new buildings quickly fall into disrepair and decay, land values will come down and the big parking lot will become economically possible again – but who in the community actually wants that?
I forgot to add that I agree with Greg Woodruff.
Councillor Craven has a habit of dissing issues with his creative use of convenient numbers that are really not representative of the overall situation and the point of the issue.
As said, membership potential increases could be double the 400% cited, or who knows?
It’s too late to increase parking, and people can park on the side-streets and walk a little, but that some people are having trouble accessing the library should not be dismissed with a “let them walk”!
Who said “let them walk”? That’s terrible
Councillor Craven says it in so many words whenever the issue comes up. It’s implied in this story.
I was imitating the “let them eat cake” quote.
You cannot walk anywhere in Aldershot because there is nowhere to walk to. No supermarkets, no grocery stores, no bookshops, no anything. If you live in Aldershot then you need a car.
The library building is 550 Plains East and is a number of blocks east of Waterdown Road
We have residents complaining that there is a lack of
parking. The response from councillor Craven was that
library membership is up 400% thus no problem in
accessing the library.
There is a problem however; some residents are having
trouble accessing the library. You can’t dismiss their
problem by noting other residents are having luck.
The parking lot is over capacity – that doesn’t mean
people are walking – it points to the idea that they
are driving. If everyone was walking (as was originally
hoped for) then there would be no lack of parking
and no complaining.
City staff allowed too little parking for the size of the
building. It’s 100% city responsibility to make sure
parking levels let all residents access city resources –
not just those near by.
The library is a 50 minute walk from west Aldershot
people need the ability to get around in any way they
choose – not have the city try and impose transit
methods in a “big brother” like way.