Hello! That's great that…

Hello!
That's great that minimum parking requirements are being eliminated along transit corridors.
Minimum parking requirements should be eliminated province wide, or at least in every downtown core of every urban area, to help re-densify urban areas and encourage better transit and walkability within our urban areas. There should be NO reason to require a car in a properly planned urban area, like many of our main streets and downtown areas were 100 years ago (and still are if you go to the nice, desirable, old parts of town!). If developments would like to offer parking, no problem, but they should absolutely not be a requirement. The result is that cities begin sprawling, and become extremely low density to accommodate so many cars on the road. The lower density a city becomes, the greater the need to drive everywhere. It is a positive feedback loop that results in sprawl. Eliminating parking requirements more broadly would help wean us off car-dependency, which would help build back active transportation; making people healthier and more active, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It would also have the added benefit of making our communities closer, physically, allowing for more spontaneous and frequent interactions with neighbours and friends. Additionally, sprawl is also costlier than more compact development, as it requires more (taxed) infrastructure, and the costly ownership of an automobile. Minimum Parking requirements also make it very (prohibitively) expensive to build middle density, low and midrise development, as much additional space needs to be purchased just for parking, when it isn't necessarily needed to begin with. That is the some of the housing we are very lacking in all over Ontario, the lack of which has contributed significantly to the housing crisis. By reducing sprawl , we also end up preserving more of our farmland and natural areas. We give up a lot of space, time and money to cars, and it is time for that to wind down.

Thanks for reading my comment!