Parking fine hike is a must amid shortfall
There is no route out of financial disaster for the City of Toronto that doesn’t involve ticking off its residents. Whether civic leaders raise property taxes or implement deep service cuts — or do both of those things — Torontonians will feel the pain.
The goal of city council then should be to identify revenue opportunities where the city’s gain far outweighs its pain. It is with this sentiment in mind that we humbly ask readers to approach our next suggestion with an open heart: Toronto city council should raise parking ticket penalties for drivers who break the rules.
This isn’t a half-baked idea we arrived at on our own but the official conclusion of a recent report from the city’s transportation services department; a report that recommends increasing fines for a total of 125 parking offences.
According to city staff, such a move could bring in roughly $40 to $50 million in new revenue to the city’s coffers — an estimate that is nothing to sneeze at in the face of Toronto’s massive budget shortfall of more than $1 billion in 2024 and more than $40 billion dollars over the next 10 years.
The parking issue is set to go before city council next month. If approved, fines for common parking offences could jump significantly. For example, the fine for failing to pay for on-street parking or for parking a car in a permit area, absent a permit, could increase from $30 to $75.
The sticker shock is jarring for every resident who drives and will no doubt displease members of council for whom any attempt to penalize drivers is a step too far. But we ask Torontonians to consider the fact that while we dislike parking tickets, we tend to dislike tax increases even more.
The city desperately needs to find new sources of revenue to dig itself out of a financial chasm and according to Star columnist Matt Elliot, the revenue gained through a parking fine increase could “offset the need for a future one per cent residential property tax increase.”
What’s more, it sends the appropriate message to drivers who break the rules that parking dangerously — blocking bike lanes and parking in pedestrian crossovers — is not worth the financial risk.
After all, according to the report, one justification for the change is that Torontonians pay less than average compared to residents in other major Canadian towns and cities when it comes to some parking offences.
Increasing parking ticket penalties would “ensure better alignment with penalty amounts in other jurisdictions, encourage compliance, ensure certain offences are set at levels commensurate with the seriousness of the offence, and ensure that offences within the same categories are set at the same penalty amount for consistency.”
It’s telling that such a policy change has the backing of suburban centrists and downtown cycling advocates alike. Last month, deputy mayor Jennifer McKelvie, a suburban city councillor of Scarborough-Rouge Park told the Star’s Alyshah Hasham that such a policy is “long overdue.”
Of course, there are obvious drawbacks to the idea. Toronto is already prohibitively expensive for many people and parking isn’t always easy to find for residents rushing to escort an elderly parent to a medical appointment or to pick up children from daycare. Therefore, the city must work to ensure that enforcement is fair and consistent across all wards.
It must also make good on its promise to improve the speed and reliability of bus, subway, and streetcar service for residents who want to ditch their cars to commute into the core, but who turn to driving in the absence of adequate transit options.
In the end, just as the city must work to improve services for Torontonians, residents must accept the reality that a functioning, livable city doesn’t come cheap. The sky will not fall if scofflaw drivers pay more. And all of us will reap the benefits.