I’ll come right out and say it, I’m no expert at parking. And as painful as it is to personally admit such a shortcoming, I’ve never been tasked to look into parking on the scale required for a municipality of some 8,000 souls, give or take a dozen.
The working group formed to study parking in Renfrew and make recommendations has done so, and much to my surprise, it came back with recommendations and I’m still alive. I had suggested that the whole working group thing was just another piece of due diligence, which may be a bit of an over-reach, but I suppose such steps are part of any healthy exercise by which a municipality can come to grips with its current parking policy, and adjust it to fit the emerging needs of the community. Such gatherings usually take time, and more time, and then more time, because people like to talk, and then talk some more, and then even more still. But this group somehow got it all done in a few months. And I’m still alive!
With respect to parking, there’s no standing still.
Which brings me to one point, the point where it’s recommended that all prohibitions against standing — stopping your vehicle for a period of time with you still in it, often with the engine idling — will be removed.
I think.
It was difficult for me, a mere novice in parking issues, to determine some areas of policy change, because of the mechanical choice to strike-through existing policy and supplant it with new policy that’s underlined and highlighted in blue text. I guess the working group determined that this would be an enormous time-saving move. We’ll just keep the existing document, strike through what you want to get rid of, then right beside the strike-through, place an underlined revision in blue. I guess creating another column right beside the existing one was too much to contemplate. Or maybe they’re just lazy.
I can’t comment on anyone and their laziness for the simple reason that, other than Chief Guest, I have no idea who served on this working group. Apparently thrown together by the CAO — Chief Administrative Officer — the group exists amidst of cloak of closely-guarded secrecy, I guess to protect its members from irate clients of a certain hairdressing shop on Hall Avenue. But I don’t know if that’s even a possibility, because, while I think parking is now prohibited in front of that business, I’m not 100% sure because of the nebulous nature of the tables and spreadsheets found in the appendices, particularly the appendix labelled Appendix AB, I guess because we ran out of letters? That’s the one with the strike-throughs and underlined revisions, and it shows either that parking is prohibited along the length of Hall, or just in the areas specified in the document that, when you add them all up, seem to indicate the entirety of Hall Avenue.
The same can be said of a number of spots in town, where I’m not entirely sure if parking is allowed or not. But then again, it may be just me suffering from a degree of mental density that makes it difficult to interpret information as hammered together by a top-secret working group.
I suppose I could have lingered in front of Town Hall in my car with my Canon camera and its reach-out-and-go-get ‘em lens in hopes of picking off members of the TSWG, just like those surveillance cops used to do in all those shows I watched growing up. But that would be standing, or stopping while still in the vehicle, for prolonged periods and occupying space. And that’s not allowed. Or is it?
I could have taken those photos and brought them home to my basement where I could set up one of those display boards with coloured string, or even yarn, to make connections between the people in the photos, with Fire Chief Guest right at the top of the display. Just like the police on television do. But that, of course, is silly. I have no basement, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to go out and purchase coloured string or yarn to make it all work.
One recommendation made by the TSWG was to take the parking spots found in the municipal lots, and insert some paid parking spots in there to go along with the majority non-paid parking spots. You can see the hand of a downtown business person here, as nothing in this town can proceed without the okay of a downtown business person. So they keep their free parking so as to attend their businesses, along with any employees they may have, but they’re going to carve lout a couple of spots for paid parking to provide what the top-secret working group called “flexibility.”
They hit the nail right on the head. Whenever I talk about parking with friends, dinner guests, associates, and the guy at the Horton dump, it almost always comes up that there’s a dire need for parking flexibility here in Renfrew. It’s just good to know, and comforting to see, that we’ll all have flexibility moving forward. People crave choice, and that paid versus unpaid choice is the way to go. So kudos to the business person for identifying this shortfall and whipping the rest of the TSWG into shape. That’s leadership, and we have it right here in River City.
You’re still allowed to park in front of RCI — Renfrew Collegiate Institute — but parking is definitely an issue along that stretch of roadway, since on the one hand it’s vital, and on the other, dangerous. I honestly don’t know how it is that nobody’s been killed yet by some teenaged yahoo ripping along past those parked cars, especially at dismissal time. I guess if the TSWG gives the go-ahead, I should rest easy moving forward, which is easy to do because I’m never anywhere on that street at that location when the traffic shit hits the fan.
Apparently, there will be no parking at all along Renfrew Avenue East, which to my reading would include the entire block coming off Raglan and running alongside Scotiabank and a couple of businesses on the other side. I would have advocated for the removal of a single spot, the first one you see on the right as you turn right off Raglan onto Renfrew, but it appears that they’re getting rid of the entire bunch of them. I guess if you’re going to toss a grenade at an issue to fix things, you’re going to get this kind of result, since grenades are not exactly the most precise of surgical weapons. It’s too bad that entire little stretch along there was purpose-built for parking during the last major reconstruction of Raglan and Plaunt Streets a few years ago, probably something that was influenced by a business owner who happened to be on Council at the time, but I don’t know that for sure. But stuff like that can happens here.
So if there’s no longer any parking there, we’ll be left with an urban feature that can now be re-purposed as a tourist attraction. Or failing that in its own right, it would make a nifty spot for a tour bus loaded with Japanese tourists to park while the riders run into Scotiabank for photos.
You’re not allowed to park your vehicle facing the wrong direction on any road, which is a big surprise because I see this kind of stupidiffery pretty often here in town. I’ve oftened wondered what went through the minds of people who would park like this in the first place, but I fear a closer examination of this would lead to cricket sounds. This is right up there with those clowns who park trailers along the side of the road, with half of the thing taking up space on the roadway. Again, how some inebriated idiot doesn’t pile into one of these things is absolutely incredible to me.
Loading zones along Raglan are to be re-purposed as accessible parking, to go along with the other new accessible parking spots the TSWG has identified as being necessary, or even vital. I believe, from the sound of it, that there was mach back-slapping and high-fiving with Renfrew now having a ratio of handicapped/non-handicapped parking that exceeds the provincial standard. I don’t know what that ratio is, but there will certainly be more parking spots that are to be taken out of the mix unless you’ve got the mandatory signage or other indicator that says you can park there. So if you were struggling to find parking along Raglan as it stands now, you may find that to become an even greater challenge moving forward.
The increase in accessible spots, of course, will make life much easier for people who need those spots, so using that lens, the reconfigurement of spaces is a net win.
Did the TSWG give any consideration to parking that leads to dangerous blind spots in town? This town was planned by either total incompetents or people spending too much time staring into in their whisky tumblers, because blind spots exist all over the place. And then we compound the problem by establishing parking spots that add to the problem. It must be tough to be involved in driver education and training in this town.
In this regard, maybe the TSWG could have a look at the lot directly behind Town Hall, which is absolutely brutal if you’re trying to come out of Metro using that narrow laneway onto Plaunt. The person who parks their truck their everyday is probably a Renfrew staffer, blissfully unaware of how often his/her vehicle is being cursed by anyone trying to get out of there. I’m surprised somebody hasn’t taken some inappropriate action against that vehicle.
I could go on and on, but that would be me going on and on, and so I won’t.
I’ve included the actual documentation presented to council via the meeting agenda that showcases the efforts and the finesse the TSWG employed in solving Renfrew’s parking problems.
If you have any questions, all I can recommend is that you don’t ask me. I’m just some guy writing a blog. You’d want, instead, to ask someone who was part of the TSWG.
But I just don’t know who they are.
It’s secret.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 