Boulevard Parking (Kitchener)

[danbrotherston]

I think that even a nominal fee and permitting system has some advantages, being that it forces people to expect rules and regulations more, and it is easier to remove something that is being permitted than something that is free, so that if you wanted to remove half the street parking on a given street, it wasn't that one side was losing "their" parking and the other wasn't, it was that half as many permits were going to be sold, and you had to deal with prices going up, but could buy the permits nonetheless. That also makes it easier to stop selling permits on one side in the event you need to widen a road for more cars or bikes or whatever, because you are reminding people that the property line doesn't start at the curb.

There are advantages. I'm always concerned with fees and permit systems though, because it's explicitly granting privileges to people with money. That being said, part of car ownership needs to be responsibility for storage so I'm all good with increasing the burden of ownership. Especially if the revenues from such fees are committed to improving active transportation. I'd be 100% in favour of using revenue from street/boulevard permits being applied to clearing sidewalks.

This is already granting privileges to people with money, people with money can afford houses with big boulevards.  In fact, having fees decreases that concentration of value, because the fees can be spent on people who can't afford big boulevards, as you point out.