Many civil projects in urban centres stir up cries over loss of curbside parking directly in front of businesses. The common refrain from the business community is that removing these limited number of parking spaces will render their enterprise obsolete: their customers will no longer be able to access their storefront. While there is room for nuance over very specific uses of curbspace, this is a very short sighted outlook. A business relying on a finite resource (curbspace) to wholly sustain their business in a growing region is a very risky, if not doomed, plan.
Burnaby Heights
Curbspace on Hastings St in the streetcar-suburb-turned-high-street neighbourhood of Burnaby Heights has not increased in some time. For that to happen, dimensional reality would have to have been upended – a wormhole opened, perhaps. And besides, it’s widely known that the only wormholes to exist in the area are the ones inside the stomachs of Anton’s Pasta customers.
Given the finite, non-changing amount of curbspace available, and the fact that many businesses are no more than 2-3 vehicle-lengths wide suggests that businesses don’t rely solely on vehicles parked on the street for their customer base. If they did, they would likely only see 2-3 customers every hour with how long many cars stay parked.
In fact, many business owners overestimate how many of their customers arrive by motor vehicle. This has been shown in Berlin, Toronto, and Washington, DC: more people arrive by walking, cycling, or by bus than business owners think, and this is unlikely to change in the future. Especially in a region with a growing population, access to businesses by car is not often improving. As with the finite curbspace, road space is generally not growing – there are nice things like Artigiano and Anton’s in the way of doing this. Trip times by driving are generally not improving, nor is vehicle throughput on roads increasing – it too has plateaued long ago. Therefore, to have a growth strategy that relies on car drivers being an increasing source of your customer base is a risky proposition.
This is not to completely dismiss what curbspace actually is: some of the most valuable real estate that cities are in control of. Curbspace and adjacent sidewalk is undeniably a very precious resource. It’s the closest one can get to the business they want to patronize without being inside. It can be safe and comfortable walking space; or patio space to sit and enjoy food or beverages; it can be bike parking or bike-share docks; it can be beautiful greenery or a shade-providing tree; or it can be a food truck. Likely, it could be a great deal of other nice things too. And for some with disabilities, it can be a hugely essential part of their lives: dedicated parking. This is not to say that car parking solves the accessibility issue completely, as it cannot be forgotten that many disabilities preclude people from driving entirely.
In the case of Burnaby Heights, the valuable nature of Hastings St curbspace is proposed to be used as lanes permanently dedicated to buses as part of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route. The plan is to use the valuable curb space to enable fast and reliable movement of 60,000 people per day. While not all of those bus riders may transit through the Burnaby Heights portion of the route, even a fraction would be a tremendous number of potential patrons to the 200+ businesses in the neighbourhood.
The proposition that businesses should consider in this scenario is this: while curbspace for parked cars is a finite resource that plateaued in its usage 80 years ago (when the concrete curbs were first poured), transit is a source of business that has incredible growth potential. The number of transit riders that could access Burnaby Heights by bus is able to grow many times over the number of additional cars that can be crammed into the already-used curbspace. Buses can carry over one hundred people each and can come as often as there is demand for. Compared to the number of cars that can park curbside, even accounting for parking turnover, the potential for transit to increase business is sky high.
It is scary for business owners to give up something that they have relied on for so long, or used themselves to access their workplace for many years. But continuing to remain reliant on a resource that can’t grow isn’t just an entrenched mindset, it’s risky business.
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