Open Collections

Abbott, Neal T.

The negative implications of excess off-street parking have been discussed at length. From the large financial costs to the negative impacts parking can have on urban form, parking, while a seemingly unimportant component of the urban landscape, plays a significant role in informing both mode choice and overall density. The West End neighborhood, often found to have some of the highest residential densities in Vancouver, is not immune to these issues as well. In recent years, the West End’s Residential Parking Permit (RPP) program has faced consistent issue with congestion and parking shortages, as the on-street parking supply is often over 90% occupied. With permits costing roughly $6 a month, this on-street parking option is often substantially cheaper than parking in one’s own building. As a result, while the neighborhood’s on-street parking supply is consistently in high demand, off-street parking facilities in the neighboring residential properties are sparsely used, with occupancy rates consistently below 50%. Additionally, this leads to increased traffic in the area and creates difficulty for visitors and caretakers looking for places to park. Through the shared parking strategies examined in this report, the off-street stalls offer a potential solution for on-street congestion. Furthermore, study of common building forms in the area reveals that many residential properties could make large contributions to the RPP program with just their existing surface parking lots, alleviating the need to undergo costly retrofits. With these options in mind, the City of Vancouver could address its prevalent parking congestion issues by working with West End properties to unlock currently underutilized parking supplies.

Graduating Project

eng

2017-01-31

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/57704

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/