Yaletown’s business community is planning to rally later this week against the city’s plan to remove parking spots from two of the neighbourhood’s streets.
The city is hosting a public open house on the plan Thursday at the Roundhouse Community Centre from 2 to 8 p.m., but the Yaletown BIA has other plans.
“We’re rallying the troops,” said Yaletown BIA executive director Annette O’Shea, adding she expects a large turnout.
The City of Vancouver have announced they are removing the majority of parking stalls in Yaletown without the proper consultation of community stakeholders. Multi-model transportation is what makes Yaletown unique and it's cultural and economic vibrancy … https://t.co/0i6hC8mX4G pic.twitter.com/06eni9IIkr
— Yaletown BIA (@iyaletown) February 19, 2018
Earlier this month, O’Shea spoke out against the city’s plan to remove a large number of parking spots from Mainland and Hamilton streets.
City staff met with O’Shea and the association’s board of directors in mid-January and to advise the association of the plan to remove the parking spots by March in order to open up those streets to allow easier access for fire trucks.
“We get that. We fully support fire trucks getting to where they need to go, of course we do,” O’Shea said earlier this month, adding the association has come back with suggestions on other ways to configure the parking, or removing other spots.
She said removing the parallel parking spots on the east side of the streets instead of the diagonal parking on the west side would still open up access and would result in fewer parking spots being lost.
Initially O’Shea said she was told that about 100 spots would be removed, but on Monday she told the Courier that number has increased to 174 with an undetermined number being added to other streets and a parkade.
“We can’t survive losing that many parking spots,” O’Shea said. “It will close Yaletown.”
Paul Storer, manager of transportation design, said the city is planning on removing between 60 and 80 spaces, adding that after discussions with the BIA it will likely be more on the lower end. He said the city believes it can add around 40 spots at city-owned parking lots and on other streets.
In a previous interview Storer said the city was first approached by the fire department last year with concerns about accessing the area. He said there have been a number of incidents where fire trucks had difficulty getting onto Mainland and Hamilton, and once they were able to get through, there was not enough room to set up to fight a fire.
He said the aim is to increase safety in the neighbourhood and the loss of parking is “kind of the unfortunate side effect.”
“It’s really the fire access issue,” he said. “We really need to address it.”
@JessicaEKerr
