How does that work, if I live in Coquitlam, and I drive a non-exempt car, and I go to visit my parents in Vancouver and park on the street?

They buy you a parking pass if you're staying overnight. I'd guess this would be done via Paybyphone so it's all virtual.

I am curious how they plan on enforcing this, and what defines overnight. It's not that uncommon to have friends over for boardgames until 1-2am.

snitch line, ez

Almost certainly based on people calling it in. Patrols will be limited at best, this won't be much different than neighbourhoods where it's "permit parking only". It's rare to have someone called in - I've parked my car overnight at my in-laws many times with no concerns (but I don't abuse it - it's once every few quarters). Areas which have parking problems (by the PNE for example) would likely get some light enforcement - other areas won't generate enough revenue to justify patrols.

This kind of parking pass is largely a light deterrent - they just want a few percent less people parking (go carpool or take transit)

lol, I remember back in the day when I was in school, I would just park in the residential area even though it was for permit.

I would try to park right in the middle between two houses, hoping by-stander effect would take place and neither owner would bother reporting it.

Kitsilano has joined the chat

The parking situation is bad in Fraserview/Killarney now because of all the two unit rental + laneway house. Potentially one house can have 8 cars with only 1 parking spot in the rear and 1.5 spots in the front.

Probably like supa said it's a "deterrent" cause it's not safe.

I think in general certain areas in Vancouver itself, the streets are just packed with cars. Then you have those homes putting buckets and cones in front trying to so call "reserve" the spots in their front of their homes.

Some areas is just way too insane because you literally cannot find a spot whether day or night. I don't even know how people have friends over.....

You can thank the mayor for not thinking this through... First, they allow Laneway homes to be built which takes away the garage for parking... Now they want you to use your own parking garage to avoid parking on the streets... Wtf is the logic??

Laneway homes should have NEVER been approved for this reason... Another problem the City has brought it upon themselves (but penalizing the general tax payers), just like the bike lanes and viaduct tear-down.

Still don't understand tearing down the viaducts. It's bad enough already but we'll just make everyone squeeze through a bunch of single lane streets....

And yes the laneway homes. I think Burnaby is doing a better job about it.

The viaducts don't actually carry much traffic (even in their pre-bike lane days) relative to how much land it takes up and the impact it makes to dividing the neighbourhood. Cities around the world have been tearing down elevated roadways in city centers for a while now b/c they realise how much negative impact it has to neighbourhoods.

Replacing them with surface streets adds a couple mins to the commute but makes the whole area safer, cleaner, easier to live in while also freeing up land to build housing on.

re: Laneways - the concept of laneways is great but the actual use/design of them has been pretty underwhelming. Too many of them are built/designed by terrible builders so they are ugly and poorly laid out - many of them feel more like college dorms than homes. The nice ones are far and few between (see: https://smallworks.ca/projects/ or Lane Houses ? Lanefab Design/Build).

The original design was a compromise so NIMBY's didn't show up with pitchforks at City Hall but now with 10 years of them we should have learned that they fit in just fine and fixed the parts that don't work which include:

- Allowing full 2 story laneways. The half storey 2nd floor was designed to avoid casting too many shadows on neighbouring lots but this makes the upstairs pretty awful to live in.
- Allowing larger laneways (tied to the above).
- Requiring more parking. Turns out most garages aren't used as garages and that uncovered parking is more effective so let's allow double wide carports or allow the laneway to be setback further so people can park perpendicular to the lot (along the alley).
- Allow different types of parking options. Let me do a 2 story laneway with a double garage downstairs and a 450sf studio upstairs (or extend the upstairs so it's 600sf).

I'm trying to understand the emissions charge, they're trying to do this annually, not 1 time correct?

so if it's $1k, after 10 years i would have paid $10k on a 2022+ ICE car?

wouldn't that just drive up the price for older cars prior to 2022?

Bryn from LaneFab has always been trying push COV to change a few policies for bigger lane way homes.

Having a full two story laneway house would be awesome, as it would fit my family of 4 comfortably, but with current policies, I'm only allowed to build maximum of 940sq

Not sure how the laneway housing policies are in Toronto, but some of their laneway homes their are massive, some having the appearance as high as 3 stories tall.

Does it not serve the purpose to cutting through all those lights? The elevated viaduct is effectively 4-5 blocks long if you get on from Venables/Prior street.

I can't pretend to know because I haven't looked at the studies.


About the laneway homes, it's also because most of them goes to the lowest bidder and they are just trying to get a rental unit up and running for the lowest possible cost. There are some amazing looking laneways (the one across the back alley from my place comes to mind) but the parking situation is guaranteed to suck.
Even for my house with a 44ft width, it would suck. I currently have a 2 car garage and 2 sxs parking spots outside next to the garage. If I build a laneway I'll probably be left with 1 large parking spot or two really tight ones. We have two cars right now, we have a basement suite that will most likely have one car (renting to a friend), and if a laneway house that's another car.

The NIMBYism is going to go strong as long as the old bugalows are still around because (stereotyping) those houses are the lowest and are usually lived in by older folks who are also the most vocal about these things. Those ppl will be the ones that complain that these monster laneways are taller than their homes.
I agree the laneways should definitely take on the stacked townhouse concept where living space is all upstairs and leave the ground floor area for parking. A standard 33ft wide lot would actually be perfect as you can still have a 2 car garage and the extra 8ft or so on the side can be used for the entrance area. But hey we are making too much sense.

It does serve that purpose, it's just WAY overbuilt for it. The viaduct was built when the plan was to run a highway up to it and with no highway it has way more capacity than it needs for that purpose so the tradeoff of taking up that land for a road versus building a park or housing (or anything else) isn't worth it anymore. Saving a couple mins on someone's commute ends up not being worth what that land could otherwise do (that's pretty prime real estate).

Wild fact: Something like a third of the land (often more) in most cities is used for roads and parking. Considering the value of land it's completely insane that we devote so much of our land to moving cars/trucks from point A to point B. This is what people mean when we say we subsidize cars.

As I understand it, the pollution charge would only apply if:

- you require an overnight street parking pass
- the vehicle in question falls into the Tier 2 (200 - 225 g CO2/km) or Tier 3 (225g+ CO2/km) categories

My googling skillz suck, but I did manage to find the following CO2 emission info for the current crop of Honda vehicles:

174 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Fit
189 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Civic Coupe
186 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Civic Sedan
167 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Civic Hatchback
223 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Civic Type R
170 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Accord Sedan
117 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Accord Hybrid
115 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Insight Hybrid
36 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Clarity Plug-in Hybrid
181 g/km of Co2 for the Honda HR-V
180 g/km of Co2 for the Honda CR-V
265 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Passport
266 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Pilot
248 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Odyssey
269 g/km of Co2 for the Honda Ridgeline


With the CoV pollution Tier 2 starting at 200g CO2/km, it means only the bolded vehicles will get slapped with the pollution charge (the red ones are in Tier 3 with the $1k annual charge). I'd expect similarly sized vehicles from other manufacturers to be exempted as well. But if your vehicle falls into Tier 2 or 3 and you park on the street, it is an annual charge, and you will rack up $10k over 10 yrs from the pollution charge alone. And then there'll also be the permit fee itself. Past recommendations from the City suggests that the $45/yr fee will only be an introductory fee, and the charge would be bumped up over the years. There are rumours that the increase will be significant. Personally, I haven't been able to find any proof of that yet -- but that really just means I haven't found anything yet. Low income people will also reportedly have the overnight parking permit fee reduced to $5.

If you park in the garage or on the driveway, then you won't need the overnight parking permit, and you won't get hit by the pollution charge as well.

Anyone who thinks the $45 overnight pass fee won't be increased significantly after the initial period is delusional.

As if our sky high insurance rates and fuel prices weren't enough.

Similar lot size along with a 2 car garage.

Currently the entire house hold has 4 cars, including the rental unit. One parks in the garage, one parks on the outside of the garage, and the other two cars are front to back in the back yard.

If we go ahead with the lane way house, that knocks the parking down to two spots but tandem style. The rental would need to park on the street, which is pretty ample anyways.

I was under the assumption that ALL cars 2023 or newer registered in Vancouver proper would incur a pollution charge. The pollution is a separate thing altogether compared to the parking permit, and both are enacted in the name of environmental friendliness.

If you build a laneway, then you'd potentially add another car or two to the household vehicle count.

If I buy a 2nd toy (Miata) then we'd have too many cars to spot ratio.

sheesh it's like they made it complicated to confuse the hell out of you on purpose. thanks for the clarification. i do park in my garage so i'm safe, i wasn't aware of that caveat, but my vehicle would most likely be exempt

applies only to brand new vehicles 2022 or 2023+

You know... I have a feeling once the other citys see how much $$$ CoV racks in, they will jump in and try to grab a piece of pie for themselves...

Only a matter of time lol..... which means I need to tell the wife... is500 NAAAAWWW... lolol

Thank god I live in Burnaby....

It didn't pass. They finally listened to general sentiment.

From what I gathered on Twitter the opposition was more of the "You don't have the right to charge me to park on the street" and less of the "The intent is good but this is a badly formed policy".

I'm of the latter camp - I'm all for measures to reduce the number of cars on the road and to charge car owners a fair amount to use our roads but this was not a well thought out policy.