Why Do You Have to Pay to Use Your Own Parking Pad in Toronto?

The way humans hunt for parking and the way animals hunt for food are not as different as you might think. 
Tom Vanderbilt

Parking spaces are worth more than gold in Toronto and parking pads are now an endangered species. The city apparently doesn’t want to allow any new parking pads; I couldn’t even begin to understand their logic… Torontonians who have no parking have to shell out approximately $200/year for a parking permit. This allows them to park on their street, near their homes (hopefully). If the parking permit allotment for their street is already at capacity they will get a permit for parking on a nearby street, and still pay the same amount of money (even though they’re being inconvenienced).

The biggest money grab of all is the coveted parking pad. Homeowners pay upwards of $20,000 to build a parking pad. A friend of mine has one such parking pad. It’s quite large and can accommodate two cars quite comfortably. For this pleasure she has to pay the city of Toronto $400 annually. Yes, she has to pay the city of Toronto for the use of her own parking pad that is on her property and was privately paid for with no contribution or subsidy from the city. She recently was paid a visit by a city employee who inspects parking pads (and is probably being incredibly overpaid for this idiotic job that requires no skill). He informed her that she was not permitted to park more than one car on HER PARKING PAD. In fact he was coming back to inspect and if there were two cars parked, he was going to have one towed away.

This is draconian! A homeowner builds a parking pad on their own property (with proper permissions and permits) at their own considerable expense  and then effectively has to lease it annually from the city of Toronto who arbitrarily has the unmitigated gall to tell them how they can or cannot use it! This boggles the mind. Unfortunately, you really can’t fight city hall and when it comes to parking, we’re all being royally screwed!

He parks in the far corner of the lot, explaining that it is more logical to do this and then walk for fifteen seconds than it is to spend fifteen minutes looking for a closer space. 
Neal Stephenson

Make someone smile today.

Geri