GO Reserved Parking

[Swamp Thing]

My limited understanding of suburban parking is that it typically costs malls an average of $50/month per spot for maintenance, snow removal, cleaning, etc.

Seems high, don't you think?

Streetsville GO Station, for example, has 1,329 parking spots. If each costs $50 a month to maintain, that's $66,450 a month or $797,400 a year for snow removal, patching and painting little yellow lines.

Maybe $50 a month is what malls charge on store leases. I'd be surprised if they spent even a large fraction of that on parking lot maintenance.

 

[rbt]

Streetsville GO Station, for example, has 1,329 parking spots. If each costs $50 a month to maintain, that's $66,450 a month or $797,400 a year for snow removal, patching and painting little yellow lines.

You missed servicing the debt on building the space in the first place. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if snow removal was several hundred thousand per year for a mall.

Anyway, security, insurance, property taxes, etc. need to be included as well.

Since GO sells the spots, security/enforcement will be a non-trivial portion too.

 

[Swamp Thing]

You missed servicing the debt on building the space in the first place. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if snow removal was several hundred thousand per year for a mall.

Anyway, security, insurance, property taxes, etc. need to be included as well.

Since GO sells the spots, security/enforcement will be a non-trivial portion too.

Debt servicing? Insurance? Shades of Ontario Hydro! You can also add in all of GO Transit's overhead costs costs, if you like.

And while a mall with 8,000 spots may indeed pay "several hundred thousand per year" for snow removal, Streetsville GO Station, with under 1,400 spots, would likely not. (Unless the snow removal contractor is somebody's brother-in-law.)

 

[rbt]

Debt servicing? Insurance? Shades of Ontario Hydro! You can also add in all of GO Transit's overhead costs costs, if you like.

And while a mall with 8,000 spots may indeed pay "several hundred thousand per year" for snow removal, Streetsville GO Station, with under 1,400 spots, would likely not. (Unless the snow removal contractor is somebody's brother-in-law.)

The side discussion was the standard commercial cost for maintaining a parking space. Only GO knows its own costs but apartment complexes, malls, etc. around the city all have roughly the same costs with some variance for property taxes.

A 1400 space parking lot will typically have higher snow removal costs, per parking space, versus a larger 8000 space lot.

 

[Swamp Thing]

A 1400 space parking lot will typically have higher snow removal costs, per parking space, versus a larger 8000 space lot.

Yes, due to fixed costs per lot regardless of the lot's size. (For example, time traveling to the lot, billing the lot owner and similar overhead.)

This higher per-space cost should not result in a 1,400 space lot having higher TOTAL snow removal costs than an 8,000 space lot, however.

I expect that volume discounts come into play too. If GO Transit is smart, they may be tendering the contract for several of their lots combined, to give them more leverage.

 

[rbt]

Yes, due to fixed costs per lot regardless of the lot's size. (For example, time traveling to the lot, billing the lot owner and similar overhead.)

This higher per-space cost should not result in a 1,400 space lot having higher TOTAL snow removal costs than an 8,000 space lot, however.

Umm, yeah. The original question was regarding the appropriateness of the $50/month to $70/month fee for a single reserved parking space.

My argument was that this is roughly the going commercial rate to install/maintain a space; thus is probably appropriate.

 

[kettal]

Those are valid points, Northern Light. It might be a tough case to make, though, when we see how many people have stopped using plastic bags to save five cents. People can be extremely sensitive to even relatively small costs, especially if they used to get the product or service for free.

If parking charges come into effect at the same time as a significant ticket price decrease, there would be no room to complain

 

[Platform 27]

If we are to move towards charging for plain-vanilla parking at GO stations without sending longtime users running screaming back to car commuting, there really needs to be care taken to ensure it's purely a financial hit (with a well-advertised corresponding reduction in fares) rather than financial hit plus a frustrating inconvenience as well.

Imagine having lines of 200+ idling cars forming at 5:30 pm every weekday, each with a cranky driver hoping to get home to their family, who have to queue up as everyone stuffs a ticket in a slot to make a gate open. 12-car monster consists at rush hour just spit way too many people out at once to simply copy the standard mall parkade or Metropass lot way of doing things. Traffic snarls associated with stations are already a sore spot, and that's without gates. I simply can't see them being grafted in without hell breaking loose.

Some sort of cleverer system would need to cooked up, and perhaps Presto cards might be of use here... You park in the morning, punch in your spot number at a kiosk, and wave your card by a reader there. That covers both your fare and your parking fee. Miscreants would then get ticketed at midday.

Does anyone know if the long-term plan is to retain monthly passes once Presto is implemented? As best I can tell, they couldn't be elegantly worked into the above.

 

[kettal]

... or just run it like TTC does their paid lots...

 

[RedRocket191]

Does anyone know if the long-term plan is to retain monthly passes once Presto is implemented? As best I can tell, they couldn't be elegantly worked into the above.

DavidH can add more to this, but from what I understand they are going to have virtual passes. You won't be able to buy a monthly pass, but you get progressive discounts as your ride more.

After X number of rides in a period of X number of days the rest of the rides will be free until the end of period, for example.

 

[Second_in_pie]

DavidH can add more to this, but from what I understand they are going to have virtual passes. You won't be able to buy a monthly pass, but you get progressive discounts as your ride more.

After X number of rides in a period of X number of days the rest of the rides will be free until the end of period, for example.

Oh my, that sounds amazing.

 

[DavidH]

After X number of rides in a period of X number of days the rest of the rides will be free until the end of period, for example.

Not sure about this part...

 

[RedRocket191]

Not sure about this part...

I deal in extreme examples. That's just how I roll.

 

[TOareaFan]

Umm, yeah. The original question was regarding the appropriateness of the $50/month to $70/month fee for a single reserved parking space.

My argument was that this is roughly the going commercial rate to install/maintain a space; thus is probably appropriate.

It is not the marginal cost, however, of the few spots they charge it on. Since GO has a philosphy of free parking (generally) and since the cost of providing/maintaining reserved spots is not any higher than spots in general, then the $70 represents the profit from puting up a "do not park here" sign.

 

[kettal]

DavidH can add more to this, but from what I understand they are going to have virtual passes. You won't be able to buy a monthly pass, but you get progressive discounts as your ride more.

After X number of rides in a period of X number of days the rest of the rides will be free until the end of period, for example.

Another case of technology being used to make things more complicated. Remember kids, technology is supposed to make things simpler.