4.4 Billion Reasons for Toronto to Keep Free Motorcycle Parking

There’s a new mayor in Toronto, and he wears motorcycle boots.

In a recent feature in the Toronto Sun Mayor John Tory was photographed wearing a classic harness biker boot made by the Frye Company. He says he dons them daily when he is not wearing a suit, but mainly for comfort and not for style. For the record though, no one has yet spotted him cruising a Night Rod through Rosedale.

But when it comes to just how motorcycles fit into his vision for transportation in Toronto, will Tory walk the walk?

In November, Nazzareno Capano the Manager of Operational Planning for Transportation for the City of Toronto, told a CityNews Toronto reporter that in 2015 free motorcycle and scooter parking at on-street pay and display spots will come to an end.

Naturally motorcyclists are against the cancellation of this programme. Who doesn’t like free parking? At the same time, many car drivers jealously view it as an unfair advantage: everyone should pay for the space that they use!

But would the cancelation of free parking be a sound policy decision for the newly elected mayor and city council to support?

Motorcycle parking fees could costs the city billions

If you believe a 2011 report out of Brussels though, the introduction of motorcycle parking fees may end up costing Toronto millions, and perhaps even billions of dollars in lost productivity.

The City of Toronto estimates the current motorcycle parking regime costs about $250,000 in lost annual parking revenue. The policy was first introduced in 2005 mainly as a means of dealing with the inadequacy of the pay-and-display parking system for open vehicles where one could not secure a proof-of-payment paper tag. These tags were regularly stolen off of motorcycles, and riders were unfairly getting parking tickets. Championed by then deputy-mayor Case Ootes, himself born in the Netherlands, the policy also aimed “to alleviate congestion, to make more efficient use of the public right-of-way, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.”

The city is now preparing to deploy a new pay-by-plate parking technology. Under this system, a driver or rider can simply register their license plate number in a street-side parking machine or via a mobile app, and pay for the time they wish to use. One potential advantage for drivers is that payment can be made remotely, alleviating the need to run back to one’s parking space to “feed the metre”. For the city it means parking payment tags cannot be shared and that parking enforcement officers can use automated license plate recognition to verify payment status.

Can free motorcycle parking reduce congestion?

Toronto is currently only one of a number of major cities around the world like London (UK), Sydney, LA and Montreal, where you can park your bike for free. Since the policy was first introduced in Toronto in 2005, motorcycle registrations in this city have shot up dramatically, almost doubling. Is this a coincidence?

It is impossible to know if there is a direct causal relationship between free parking and motorcycle ridership. Speaking from personal experience though, it is exactly the reason I bought a bike at the tender age of 45. I live and work in central Toronto, but due to the many transit connections I would have to make to get downtown, driving a car has always been much faster and more convenient. Since purchasing my bike almost three years ago, my car sits idle about eight months of the year.

John Tory, in his recent successful bid to become mayor of Toronto, made traffic congestion the main plank of his campaign. Though Toronto may not be the most congested city in Canada (Vancouver has won that honour in the past few years) there can be no doubt that Torontonians spend a lot of time staring at the bumper in front of them. Needless to say, the issue of traffic congestion resonates strongly with voters.

“SmartTrack Toronto” is Tory’s $8 billion plan to use existing rail infrastructure to add new train services inside the city, thereby alleviating pressure on the subway lines and lure automobile drivers to the TTC, Toronto’s now ailing public transit system. At $3,200 per resident (or $12,800 per household of four) SmartTrack was actually the least expensive of the proposed gridlock solutions in the 2014 Toronto mayoral election campaign.

But this price tag is nothing compared to the productivity costs of congestion. A recent study by Metrolinx, Toronto’s regional transit authority, estimate that gridlock costs Torontonians up to $11 billion annually in time spent waiting to get somewhere.

But there is one solution that was overlooked in the debate. A solution that costs nothing but that may alleviate time lost to congestion by an enormous factor.

Research proves 10% more motorcycles equals 40% less travel time for all

Leuven is the capital of Brabant province, just 25km east of Brussels in Belgium. It is most famously the home of brewing empire Anheuser-Busch InBev. In 2011 Tranport & Mobility Leuven, a research firm specializing in quantitative transport research and modeling, conducted a detailed case study on a highway between Leuven and Brussels to see if commuting by motorcycle significantly impacted traffic congestion and air quality. They found that if motorcycles replaced only 10% of the four-wheeled automobiles in their study, the result would be an astounding 40% reduction in travel time lost. They also predicted a 6% reduction in overall emissions.

How more motorcycles can save Toronto $4.4 billion

If you apply that to the $11 billion amount in lost productivity from Toronto congestion, you could make a very good case that such an increase in motorcycle use on our streets and highways could have a dramatic multi-billion dollar impact on economic costs; perhaps even a $4.4 billion impact.

At the end of 2012, motorcycles and scooters made up only 2.1% of vehicle registrations in the city of Toronto. That number though had increased substantially since 2005 when it was only 1.3%. At the current rate of growth it is not hard to imagine that by 2020 that number could well rise to 3 or 4%. These numbers do not tell us how many of these two-wheelers are used to commute back and forth to work, nor do they take into account ridership from the suburbs into and out of the city. If we assume that half of the registered vehicles are used for commuting though that would mean about 1% of Toronto traffic in fair weather is made up of motorbikes. In the Leuven equation, that could still amount to $440 million of economic gains in productivity, or over 1700 times more than the quarter million lost to parking revenue.

Mayor Tory will have to grapple with some serious questions, ones that may have much bigger implications for his transportation policy than he may have imagined. Just how much does motorcycle traffic currently impact congestion in this city? Would the cancellation of free parking cut down on the current number of bikes used as commuter vehicles? Would growth of new bike ownership be curbed?

It is interesting that the City of Toronto has never made it a policy to actively promote motorcycle ridership in the same way it has with bicycles. I only found out about the free parking policy from a friend and fellow rider. Everyone knows bicycles get free parking in the city, and hardly anyone begrudges it even though costs taxpayers money to install and maintain bicycle parking infrastructure. eBikes can park out of the way of traffic on the public boulevard.

Bicycles also get dedicated lanes and paths, and there is a publically funded bike-share programme. Everyone knows that Toronto encourages the use of bicycles, but why not motorbikes?

Next time John Tory pulls on his biker boots, he should think about how a SmartWheels policy could align nicely with his SmartTrack vision for Toronto. Just as he is using existing train tracks as an economical means of building new public transport, he can use existing parking policy to promote and grow motorcycle ridership as a cleaner and almost free means of alleviating gridlock. And if he can replace 10% of the cars on the road with motorcycles, he might just save us all $4.4 billion.

If you are interested in contacting John Tory to voice your opinion about motorcycle parking, here are some of the ways you can do so:

Twitter: @JohnToryTO

Petition to John Tory: Please Maintain Free Motorcycle Parking in Toronto
https://www.change.org/p/john-tory-please-maintain-free-motorcycle-parking-in-toronto

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/SmartWheelsTO