Councillor Cuttell throws spanner in big-vehicle parking plan

Halifax’s Transportation Standing Committee is meeting Thursday, Jan 23. On the agenda is a staff report that recommends to the committee that they not implement a policy that would help council achieve its strategic priorities.

For a bit of background, in July of last year councillor Shawn Cleary put forward a motion asking for a staff report on whether or not Halifax should start charging higher parking fees for larger vehicles. So a big car driver buying a parking permit or parking illegally would pay a more expensive fee to access or violate the rules of public parking than a smaller car. But what is big?

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Initially Cleary’s motion was to charge by weight, but councillor Patty “Spanner” Cuttell got the motion amended to be by length instead. At the time she argued that EVs are heavier, and people shouldn’t be punished for their vehicle’s increased lethality because their vehicle doesn’t produce emissions. A fair point—electric vehicles help the city’s environmental goals—but not all EVs are created equal. A comprehensive study of cradle-to-grave emissions of vehicles found that in most cases EVs are better for the environment, unless the EVs are really big. So a by-weight parking permit would still have been in line with green thinking and council priorities of an “Affordable & Sustainable Mobility Network,” and “Safe & Accessible Mobility Network.”

Regardless, the committee dropped weight and went ahead with length as the determining factor for higher parking fees. And thanks to that Cuttell-shaped wrench in the instructions, staff are recommending to the Transportation Standing Committee that the city not implement a by-length permit fee, because length is not a stat tracked in vehicle registrations. To give tickets by length would increase the workload on city parking enforcement, who would have to measure each vehicle that broke the rules, and extra administration. It’s not worth the extra hassle and expense for a transportation system that already costs about $130 million a year to maintain.

Sorting cars by length is impractical. And council didn’t ask for thoughts on sorting by weight. So the only conclusion for the report is to reject the idea of charging longer vehicles more for parking. But that shouldn’t mean the end of differential fees.

Reports have a consistent format that makes information easy to find and reminds staff what councillors want to know about. In the “advantages” section of this report, staff say that charging large vehicles higher fees would create more parking and increase revenue as people were deterred by or paid the higher fee, respectively. The city’s only real method of cost recovery for automotive infrastructure is parking fees, which currently generates about $7 million a year. These fees need to be increased drastically if the city would like to achieve its goals of making the $130 million automotive transportation system sustainable.

The only time city staff come anywhere close to mentioning council’s priorities in the report is when staff hide an advantage to this policy under the heading ENVRIONMENTAL IMPLICATIONS:

Larger vehicles are generally accepted to have a more harmful environmental footprint than a smaller alternative. While specific impacts would be difficult to estimate, a parking permit surcharge on larger vehicles could encourage vehicle buyers to consider a smaller option when shopping for their next vehicle, reducing the number of larger trucks/SUVs on the road.

So one of the implications of this policy is that the city might actually take a step towards goals of the Integrated Mobility Plan, HalifACT and our new road safety framework? Pretty cool! But it does seem like maybe the fact that this policy is in line with so many of Halifax’s strategic plans should be made a little bit more explicit.

Speaking of our priorities, beyond the IMPLICATIONS, there is no mention that increasing parking fees reduces congestion, by disincentivising trips. Which is one of the big reasons that informs the IMPLICATIONS that parking fees on large vehicles would make roads cleaner *and* safer.

The report also does not include how much parking fees for larger vehicles would need to be, in order to reach council’s priority of a sustainable mobility network, if the committee wanted to impliment a by length vehicle fee system.

On the assumption the transportation committee is working to achieve council’s priorities, at Thursday’s meeting they will go for a do-over, sending this back for a staff report on using weight as the way to implement higher parking fees, hopefully in time for consideration in this year’s budget. Otherwise you can thank councillor Cuttell’s amendment and staff’s inability to incorporate council priorities that align with the motion (institutionally or personally) in their recommendations to council. Which in this case will delay a policy that will make the city more sustainable, cleaner and safer for at least another year. Good job team, high fives all around.

This article appears in Dec 19, 2024 – Jan 31, 2025.