Motorcycle Parking Fees in the Dot: Mr Del Grande's Response and ESR's

Re: motorcycle parking in Toronto.

From Toronto Budget Chief Mike Del Grande, in my email box this morning:

Thank you for your point of view.

Why is in Toronto everything is expected for free and everywhere else

it is not?

__And my reply:

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your rapid reply.

To your point of everything in Toronto being expected for free, I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that statistic.

But in the case of motorcyclists wanting free parking, from our point of view it's because:

- We already pay disproportionately higher road taxes than cars, considering the negligible adverse impact we have on the roads

- We already pay higher insurance rates than cars, and have to buy a full year's worth of insurance even though we can't possibly ride a full year, due to snow and salt on the roads

- We take up around 1/5 the space of a small car when parked, so there's a basic real estate factor at work

- There are no practical ways to secure a parking coupon to a bike -- they tend to get stolen and destroyed by rain

- The previous admin understood that if you give people a little incentive not to drive a car, they'll take you up on it. I was one of those people, and now see new cost and hassle being added to an already (illogically) expensive mode of transport

Sir, motorcycle ownership should be actively encouraged in Toronto by people such as yourself and the mayor. It offers the only realistic, immediate and inexpensive relief to ever-worsening gridlock -- for at least 8 months of the year. Compared to the vast expense of expanding public transit and expanding the road network, the loss of parking income from bikes is a pittance.

If you have fact-based counter-arguments to these points, I would be delighted to engage you on them.