Bringing Rover to heel
Consider it the next logical step in the app-based “sharing economy.” Uber, the popular California-based ride-sharing service, came to Toronto in 2012, to the dismay of the taxi industry. Now Rover is here — doing for parking spots what Uber did for car rides.
Both offer a mobile app-based approach to putting buyers of a service in touch with sellers, and both are in conflict with longstanding city regulations. In both cases, the solution is to draft fresh standards, protecting the public from possible excesses while answering consumer desire for participation in the new economy.
Rover operates by connecting drivers to people with available parking space. Often, it’s an unused driveway. Participating motorists download an app, provide credit card information and are sent a map showing the location of Rover parking spots. The company takes 30 per cent from each transaction, with the parking fee capped at $2 an hour.
Here’s the problem: renting out private parking in Toronto constitutes running a commercial parking lot. And there are hefty fines for doing so without meeting regulatory requirements and obtaining necessary approvals.
These rules serve a purpose. It’s in a neighbourhood’s interest to block residents from turning their property into permanent, busy parking lots. That should still be banned. But there should also be a place for Rover.
The law governing this area was written before the existence of app-based sharing services, and it should be better synchronized with what’s happening in the marketplace.
As Toronto Mayor John Tory put it, this app-based technology is “here to stay, it’s not going anywhere and we’d better find a way to make sure regulations catch up with it.”
A possible way to do that might be to cap the number of parked cars a property owner is allowed to accept. If this cap was set relatively low, say one or two vehicles a day, it would go a long way to alleviate concern that Rover would result in something akin to a bustling parking lot.
It should be possible to reach some middle ground. Indeed, given the tenor of the times, maybe someone will find an app for that.