Leong: It takes more than easy parking to stimulate economic activity

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As a driver, there’s only one thing more annoying than getting stuck in traffic for no good reason: It’s finding a place to park.

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Several years ago, after making plans to visit with good friends from out of town, I ended up hopping in the car to meet them downtown.

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I’d normally have taken the bus but I had just missed it and figured it would be quicker for me to run home, hop in the car and drive over.

I figured wrong.

Once I got to the core, the hunt for an available parking space had me driving circles through the city centre.

By the time I finally snagged a space (which was nowhere near where I needed to be) and met up with my friends, it had taken so long that it would have been better off to hop on that next bus, despite the seemingly interminable wait.

The bus would have dropped me off near my destination, saving me aggravation — and the extra gasoline — from doing multiple laps around city block after city block in search of somewhere to deposit my vehicle.

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At first glance, you might think the long-term solution to this problem is more parking.

But it’s not — and let’s leave aside for now the fact that Calgary has been experiencing a surplus of parking.

Parking spaces don’t just magically appear out of thin air. Space for surface lots need to be taken away from a more productive use, while parkades have to be added to new builds at great expense.

And convenient vehicle storage isn’t much of an economic multiplier in and of itself.

All you have to do is direct your gaze toward Eau Claire and its soon-defunct Eau Claire Market.

That neighbourhood is covered in parking lots, with lots of on-street spaces and entire blocks devoted to car and truck storage.

Something like one-third of the Eau Claire neighbourhood is surface parking, with more spaces in underground parking garages — including beneath the Eau Claire Market shopping mall itself.

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And yet, even with discounted pricing during non-work hours, the area has never quite been as bustling as you’d expect.

Not surprising, given the mix of mostly office towers and residential complexes with very little retail and services.

Cars don’t earn or spend money — but people do

This isn’t helped by the fact that a sizeable chunk of the neighbourhood is devoted solely to unattended car storage. These huge pieces of land have no homes, no commerce, no offices — and hence, no people earning or spending money.

At the other extreme, there’ve been neighbourhoods that have dealt with no useful street parking at all.

A few years ago, you might recall the city of Calgary was renewing the utilities underneath 17th Avenue S.W., the commercial backbone of the Beltline.

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For months at a time, crews had to close multiple city blocks to tear up the pavement and get their work done.

It was a tough go and there’s no doubt some businesses on the affected stretches took a big hit.

But even at the height of the closure, with the sidewalks continuing to be accessible, the street didn’t become a wasteland. Far from it.

People seemed OK parking a little farther away or walking into the neighbourhood from a nearby bus route or even the CTrain. And there might have been a strong base of local patrons who wouldn’t have needed a car anyway. (Yes, non-drivers spend money, too.)

The absence of curbside parking was undoubtedly an inconvenience for those who absolutely needed to drive to get there, but the overall experience of being in the neighbourhood would still have been worth the additional effort.

Of course, easy parking is important for patronage but it’s far from the only factor at play.

If businesses give people other good reasons to come to their store/restaurant/bar/whatever, their customers might literally go the extra mile to see them.

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