City takes tough stance on parking pads
Requests to build spots that will include EV charging stations will be denied, officials say
City of Toronto planning staff have been told to oppose downtown homeowners who want approval to build parking pads on the basis they need access to a charger for an electric vehicle.
Lynda Macdonald, the city’s director of community planning, sent the directive after a Jan.13 Star story about a Parkdale man who won his appeal of a parking pad denial by arguing he planned to buy a Tesla and Toronto is officially encouraging electric vehicle (EV) adoption — an apparent first. “In (Toronto—East York) we will not be supporting a parking pad that is otherwise unsupportable just because it is to accommodate an electric vehicle,” Macdonald wrote in the email obtained by the Star.
Applications for such pads have long been banned in downtown wards over environmental concerns — the removal of trees and concerns that hard pads increase stormwater runoff and the amount of sewage that can flow into Lake Ontario when the city’s sewer system gets overwhelmed.
Macdonald acknowledges to her planners what many are saying — Toronto has been too slow to reconcile the coming wave of EVs with the fact that many residents in houses and highrises don’t have driveways or garages where they can charge a vehicle.
“I realize that the city has not moved as quickly as we could to accommodate charging stations on streets,” Macdonald wrote, “but front yard parking that displaces soft landscaping, may take space that could accommodate a tree and exacerbates storm water runoff is not a positive step in addressing climate change — charging station or not.”
Last year, Gregory Pechersky of Springhurst Avenue failed to persuade the city’s committee of adjustment to let him install a front-yard parking pad. The committee upheld the moratorium, in line with advice from city staff and local Councillor Gord Perks.
Pechersky, a Tesla fan, appealed to the city’s Toronto Local Appeal Body (TLAB) which, in a late December ruling, looked more favourably on his plea to be able to cover part of his yard with a permeable surface, without any tree removal, so he can park and charge an EV there. TLAB member Ted Yao ruled the application highlights a “legislative and policy gap” between the city’s opposition to parking pads and its initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change by, in part, trying to get Torontonians into EVs.
A new staff-proposed EV strategy for Toronto going to city council this month urges boosting the adoption rate of EV usage from 0.6 per cent now to 5 per cent by 2025 and 100 per cent by 2050.
It notes access to charging stations as a serious barrier, especially for “driveway orphans.” Council in 2017 instructed city staff and Toronto Hydro to launch a pilot project to install public charges in a handful of neighbourhoods for people with on-street parking. None have been installed. City staff say some chargers will finally be installed this year.
Saying city regulations have “not caught up to climate change imperatives,” Yao approved Pechersky’s requested variance from zoning rules, adding it met required criteria — minor in nature, desirable and appropriate use of the site, and in keeping with the general intent and purpose of the zoning bylaw and the city’s official plan.
City officials did not attend the appeal. Perks (Ward 4 Parkdale—High Park) said he recently got council direction for city staff to oppose a similar appeal going to TLAB. “That will be my practice going forward,” said the councillor, noting that once a pad is approved the city has no way to enforce what kind of vehicle is parked upon it.
Perks is working on a way to plug the “loophole” that let EV charging access become grounds for a parking pad, adding he’s not convinced EVs are the best way to fight climate change. “No one has shown me the (research) that it’s better to spend public money getting people into electric cars rather than buying everyone a bicycle and giving them a free transit pass,” he said.