The Low Cost of Parking Permits in Winnipeg

The Globe and Mail in their editorial has commented on the below market prices set for street parking by cities across Canada. The permits for overnight parking are so low that even car supporters ought to be embarrassed. Think that most people would agree that curbside parking near where you live is valuable. How valuable? Well, so valuable that people will get very upset about cars that park in front of their house regularly even if there are no parking restrictions at all.

Think about your own streets and how many cars are parked out front each night every night. Even when someone has two parking spaces, they sometimes end filling their garage with stuff to store and end up parking on the street instead. Along many residential streets in Winnipeg, it is an unbroken chain of cars parked overnight every night, most without permits. Even where permits are required, the cost is so low annually that it likely costs more to issue documents than what comes in. 

Winnipeg charges $50 a year for an annual parking permit. Calgary is $30 a year. In Toronto, it is $300 a year. Any of those rates seems like a deep subsidy given the value of the roads. The cost of building nearly free parking is staggering and yet every city does it. Safe to say that if all overnight parking had a fee and that it rose every year then more people might actually park in their garages or seek other parking options. 

How is that short term parking pay high prices and end up being towed when in Winnipeg you can pay $50 a park all year. What's the point of parking in your garage? It is so cheap to pay for parking on your street. It is easier to save money not using a storage locker and fill a double garage than pay market rates privately.  And don't think that doesn't happen. There are so many garages filled with stuff and cars out in the street because the cost and consequences of it are so low.

The city is so cash strapped that giving this space away for free and having it occupied all the time so that it can't be used for deliveries or customers is costly in so many ways. The last time the city looked at this was many years ago. We clearly have a cars up and down every street even when people have space to park them. This should help make people realize there is a cost for this and the city will be able to bill people for the actual cost.

Spice Affair: Essence of India Restaurant Coming Soon.

Dhoom Indian restaurant at corner of Donald and York has been there for a while. A keen reader took a picture of the closed restaurant and discovered a sign promoting Spice Affair: Essence of India coming soon.

It is unknown how much construction and remodeling is taking place but there are a few new places to eat in the area. In its earliest incarnation the building housed a Pizza Hut for many years. In the last Dhoom was a sports bar and buffet.

DT Urban Kitchen + Oyster Bar is almost immediately across the street on York Avenue.

The massive expansion of the RBC Winnipeg Convention Centre across York Avenue and the large Chipman hotel office and condo/hotel project seems destined to draw far more people downtown. Both projects have taken up massive surface parking lots.

Sadly, Donald Street is one long stretch of parking lots and only a few places are actually street friendly in between. The Jets, Moose, concerts and conventions attract a steady crowd of people and some of the large apartments and offices nearby should provide clientele for the restaurant. However, the wasted space of surface parking lots is more pronounced than in many places.

Spice Affair and a number of other new restaurants, coffee places and bars are adding some life to the streets and hope this continues to be true.

The old Dhoom being converted

It will take some time to fill in all the gaps in such an expansive city such as Winnipeg. It is good the people still want to build restaurants downtown but building a neighbourhood is slow and organic. Too many buildings are bunker-like and decidedly not friendly to the street.

Spice Affair could be a sign of more activity coming down Donald Street and for that, we can all be happy.

Kelvin High School's New Gym

Kelvin High School Seen from Academy Road

Kelvin High School was first built between 1910 and 1912 right along Academy Road. The houses of River Heights came quickly after.

L.B. Foote Picture from roof of Kelvin High

The first Kelvin was named Kelvin Technical High School and was designed by provincial architect J.B. Mitchell. It was constructed for a total of $265,000 and stood four floors. Tyndall stone and Leary red brick was used for the materials. Much of River Heights was empty in 1912 but by 1922 an addition J.N. Semmens needed to be added as the neighboorhood was surging following World War I.

Kelvin had an identical twin school built on Machray Avenue in St. John's Technical High School. The rules on naming back then was alternating between British lords and saints. Hence, Kelvin and St. John's.

The name Kelvin presumably fit a technical school as Lord Kelvin also known as Sir William Thomson was a brilliant mathematician and physicist. Today he is best known for the absolute temperature scale or Kelvin Scale. He never visited his namesake school as he died in 1907 but he did come to Canada a number of times.

The school would stand through two World Wars and lose many students to the conflicts. 55 of 527 died in WWI and 225 died of 2,640 in WWII. They were honoured on a wall within the old school.

By the 1950s, the school began to fall into disrepair. The center town had to be removed because it was unstable in 1957. Eventually the building was literally falling apart in a post-war baby boom.

A huge need for additional classroom space led to an expansion in 1963. By 1964, an entire new building for the whole school was under construction along Kingsway for around $1.4 million. The new school was ready to go in 1965 and the old school was knocked down in 1965 and is the present track and soccer field.

Kelvin officially became know as Kelvin High School in 1965. The school had always been a grade 10 to 12 school but in 1995 the school added grade 9 students. Special education and physical disabilities requirements saw elevators added and in 2002, two art rooms, two classrooms and a computer lab were built out toward Stafford Street.

Kelvin's addition in 2002

The staff parking lot has grown as the faculty has grown and many students drive now so almost every street nearby has cars parked on it with kids running out to change spots as time runs out. Parking patrols make quick work of the heedless.

The new addition in 2002 used traditional red brick and modern dark windows. I have never been a fan of the yellow frames on the rest of the school. They always seemed out of date even in the 1970s.

The latest addition will be a new gym to accommodate the increased number of students.

Kelvin students created a visual of what the new gym will look like.



In 2015, the new Kelvin building will be 50 years old. The new gym addition is probably not the last change we see to the school. Hope they start with taking out the yellow panel windows.

Parking Rate Increases in Winnipeg

Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small
That we can never get away from the sprawl
Living in the sprawl
Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains

Arcade Fire

The announcement that the city will be increasing parking fees as well as the timeframe that payment will be required to be paid is likely to stir debate. The city has used the Winnipeg Parking Authority as a piggy bank for years and has not really put the money into upkeeping their parking infrastructure. And so it went with the Winnipeg Square parkade. The facility was not kept up as well as it as it should have been and was sold for a lesser value than it could have if it had been kept up. They money from the sale has been held in limbo ever since with the vague promise it will be spent downtown.

In a nutshell, the plan for the parking authority is to earn more money, reduce administrative costs and charge more for high traffic areas such as Broadway while increasing the time that payment is required. For Broadway this would mean that rates would double from $1 to $2 and the coverage would be from 8 AM to 8:30 pm. rather than 9 AM to 5:30 PM.

In a car obsessed world, many are unhappy with the state of parking. I have been hearing it pretty much when anyone mentions the downtown. They don't like paying. They don't like the parkades because they are afraid of driving in them. They don't parallel park because they aren't good at it. They don't like parking anywhere except close to where they are shopping or eating or visiting.

In districts where people are endlessly circling looking for a street parking space, it demonstrates the problem. The thought is that increasing the parking rates will make more people consider surface or parkade parking. Many economists argue against allowing free parking with one point being it hurts poor people.

People are going to react negatively to any increase in parking prices. However, removing any restrictions or price for on street parking creates a host of problems.

So what to do?

First is the recognize that regulating transportation is something that municipalities have to take some responsibility for. Even if everyone rides bikes, it can cause traffic jams and parking problems. See Utrect, Netherlands for an example.

If there were no parking restrictions of any kind around some of the hospitals, it is unlikely that there would be any parking available for kilometres.

So, is placing a price on parking the right solution for Winnipeg when it comes to the street? Well, according to some who live here, it is a surefire way to kill an area off. If we measure the exodus to the suburban mall world over the decades, it is hard not to agree. In a society where you live by the car, you die by the car.

Would it be possible for a city like Winnipeg to simply pull the parking meters and go to posted signs that listed timeframes for free on street parking? Well, the answer is yes. If the signs were well posted, unambiguous and part of a city-wide strategy that involved ticketing, towing and fines, it is possible that all the revenue lost from the meters would be recovered from allowing it to be "free."

Realistic parking times of three hours for some areas would be good. On street parking passes for overnight parking might be a revenue generator as well.

There are a few people who dislike the Winnipeg Parking Authority. Parking meters that don't work and confusion about the signs, meters or paying in general all add up to the resistance to the department.

It is probably time that a serious debate about the future of cars, parking and the city of Winnipeg was properly discussed. The discussion crosses into zoning, policing and culture and as such, needs the proper thought. We have not taken the time to do this and we should.

The city has shown that it will talk about issues from time to time. We saw that with the debate on dog breeds in recent weeks. Not everyone might have liked the conclusion that came from that debate but it was a topic well worth re-visiting.

Bring on the talk on parking in Winnipeg.