Vancouver real-cost parking pricing = change

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/property-report/parking-being-squeezed-out-in-vancouver/article2319946/

“We’re all seeing different aspects of that trend,” Mr. McGarva says.

“In the old days,” says Vancouver’s planning director, Brent Toderian, “they would have had to not only build the parking required for the new construction” – about 300 stalls – “but you would have had to replace the parking of the old garage.” In this case, the parkade that will be torn down has about 500 spaces.

Vancouver’s 1997 transportation plan capped downtown parking and banned new roads. Since then, the number of car trips and parking spots has gradually declined, even while the number of jobs and overall trips in the central city have increased.

Back then, the parking standard was one stall for every 1,000 to 1,500 square feet. Today the figure is far less – and negotiable for every building. That’s in spite of the fact that today’s buildings hold twice as many people in these open-plan, cost-cutting times.

Last year marked a big change in parking behaviour as commuters responded to a new 35-per-cent tax on parking stalls in commercial lots, higher on-street parking costs, and the new Richmond-to-Vancouver rapid-transit line built for the Olympics that has proven to be a huge hit with the downtown crowd.

Parking revenue collected at city-owned garages dropped by 9 per cent, while funds from on-street parking, traditionally an ever-increasing moneymaker, did not rise as much as the city’s finance department had been counting on.

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D - the result of no more free (or nearly free) rides for car parking in dense city areas? People stop driving but keep coming.
It is kind of the reverse of the road 'build and they will come - and come - and keep coming' quandary.
Stop subsidizing cheap parking, in effect.
Stop treating cars like royalty.

http://www.nbm.org/exhibitions-collections/exhibitions/house-of-cars.html

And if not NO parking, then at least very dense and vertical parking.

In Waterloo, on-street uptown parking is a nightmare.
First of all, there are NO painted guides to indicate when a parked vehicle is too far out from the curb, and is literally in the one driving lane.
There seems to be some inverse relationship between the huge SUVs and minivans that folks drive and their ability to use visual-spatial awareness to park said boat.
The public bus drivers don't even attempt to stay in the side lane - they KNOW better. They straddle the middle line, treating the road as single-lane.
The roads ARE single lane.
Denial is not just a river in South America. <:
Furthermore, during any busy time of day, one lane is regularly tied up with the slow dance of parallel parking, either pulling in or out.
So the uptown really IS single lane each way anyway.
If we left a few quick drop-off and pick-up venues that did not require parallel parking to access, traffic would move continuously.
Toronto introduced those- but at the expense of pedestrians, NOT drivers. Fail...

Aside - try pulling out to the left from parking behind the Liquor Store uptown sometime onto Caroline. All that on-street parking means you are totally blind until actually straddling the nearest lane. If some yahoo is driving a bit too fast and not paying attention - BANG.
Un-*******-believable...