Parking in Waterloo Region

[ookpik]

[Fine example is the Activa Ave area.  There is an S bend street there that had legal parking on both sides.  The city allowed the developer to have single car driveways, so every house had 1-2 cars on the street.  If I drove a car down this street and faced an oncoming car, one of us would be pulling into a driveway to let the other pass.  Now lets think about a fire truck/ambulance on this same street and you know where I'm coming from.  It's a drastic example of failure on the developer and the city's planning dept.]

This is a specious argument against the idea of street parking. It is however a strong argument against street parking on both sides of the street and/or street parking on road segments like curves where it's not feasible.

There's an easy way to address the situation you describe, e.g. allow street parking only on one side of the street and prohibit it altogether on curves.

Incidentally this raises another reason why street parking, especially on both sides, should be curtailed in the winter on narrower residential streets. These streets typically aren't plowed or aren't plowed until days after a snow storm. As a result snow on either side of the street accumulates and narrows the effective width of the street. Add two cars parked across from each other and it's no wonder that wider vehicles, e.g. ambulances and fire trucks, can't navigate the street.