Rosemont mayor hoping to ‘begin dialog’ on automobile sizes with new parking costs

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Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie’s mayor is hoping his borough’s choice to start charging for parking permits primarily based on automobile weight as a substitute of engine dimension will spur provincial and federal legislators to start out encouraging motorists to undertake smaller vehicles.

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Beginning in July, an annual parking sticker in Rosemont will value $115 for electrical, hydrogen gasoline cell or plug-in hybrid autos with a internet mass of 1,549 kilograms or much less, the borough council introduced Tuesday. The payment would be the identical for internal-combustion-powered or non-plug-in hybrids with a internet mass of 1,249 kilograms or much less. A second parking sticker for a similar family will value $385.

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Whereas Montreal boroughs akin to Plateau Mont-Royal have lengthy primarily based parking allow charges on engine dimension, Rosemont is the primary to undertake a pricing system that penalizes automobile weight. Heavier autos are usually greater and occupy additional house once they park on metropolis streets, which clogs up neighbourhoods, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie Mayor François Limoges mentioned.

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“By charging for permits primarily based on automobile dimension, we hope to start out a dialog on this rising drawback,” Limoges mentioned Tuesday in a phone interview. “We hope that the subsequent steps will see different ranges of presidency finding out this subject and analyzing the affect of enormous autos on highway security and on the toll that they tackle public infrastructure. However these subsequent steps aren’t as much as us. The one factor that we will do is to behave primarily based on the powers that we’ve over parking.”

Rosemont’s drawback is shared by all boroughs: The variety of vehicles on the island of Montreal is rising quick, and autos are getting greater.

Montrealers owned 21 per cent extra passenger autos in 2021 than they did twenty years earlier — a rise that’s virtually twice as quick as the speed of progress of the island’s inhabitants over the identical interval, in response to Statistics Canada knowledge analyzed by Rosemont officers. Gentle vehicles made up about 41 per cent of the Montreal fleet in 2021, greater than double the proportion recorded twenty years earlier.

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In a February 2022 research that targeted on 5 Montreal boroughs, researchers at Polytechnique Montréal calculated that the rise in private automobile dimension may end result within the elimination of as much as 25 per cent of parking spots — assuming autos now require 6.5 metres to park as a substitute of 5 metres. Utilized to the Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie space, this may symbolize a possible lack of as many as 10,000 parking areas.

Even patrons of electrical autos are being pushed to purchase more and more bigger fashions. Chevrolet not too long ago introduced it might finish manufacturing of its solely compact electrical mannequin, the Bolt, mirroring comparable strikes by rival producers akin to Ford, Nissan and Volkswagen.

“There’s a ‘truckification’ occurring that’s now affecting electrical autos,” mentioned Marc-André Viau, head of presidency relations on the environmental group Équiterre, which ordered the Polytechnique research on gentle vehicles. “For causes of profitability, the business is pushing bigger autos. Customers have much less and fewer selection, which has main impacts on cities akin to Montreal. However this isn’t a Montreal-specific drawback.”

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As of July, costs for parking stickers in Rosemont will rise to $205 for electrical autos that weigh 1,850 kilograms or extra, and internal-combustion-powered autos or non-plug-in hybrids autos that weigh greater than 1,600 kilograms.

Ford’s F Collection pick-up truck, the preferred mannequin of its kind in Canada, weighs between 1,846 and a pair of,111 kilograms. Tesla’s common and electrically powered Mannequin 3 weighs 1,847 kilograms, whereas Honda’s CRV weighs about 1,400 kilograms.

Rosemont’s new pricing system follows a latest choice by Saguenay’s Chicoutimi borough to order parking areas for small vehicles on sure downtown streets the place an abundance of sunshine vehicles and sports activities utility autos had created persistent congestion issues.

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“With this pricing change, we hope to encourage those that don’t have any selection however to make use of a automobile for his or her travels to go for smaller codecs, or higher but, car-sharing,” Limoges mentioned. “It is a first step in the direction of factoring social and environmental prices into pricing. In the long term, our purpose is to encourage the adoption of lively modes of transportation and to cut back dependence on the auto, whether or not electrical or not.”

Presse Canadienne contributed to this report

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