Comment 64680

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted June 07, 2011 at 15:25:50

There are definitely many reasons not to want a Starbucks in downtown Dundas. If I lived there, I'd be making a lot of noise right about now. But not on account of parking. Automobile issues too often get used as surrogates for all sorts of other concerns, because they're very easy legally to explain and enforce. What it doesn't do is address any of the actual issues around development in communities.

My dislike of chain coffee shops aside, these parking laws are asinine. It's a tax on every establishment, which gets passed on to customers (if the establishment can make it that far). This tax goes to pay for automobile infrastructure even if it clearly isn't needed, and even if the customers in question didn't drive. Geographically, they increase the average distance between buildings by a serious chunk (making any round trip much longer), and prohibits people from opening smaller, cheaper, alternatives. It's a blatant subsidy, and one we don't need.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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