Brown: Zoning-bylaw update must heed need for parking in rural Ottawa

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Ottawa is in a housing crisis. How we respond to that crisis today will have long-term impacts on whether future generations will be able to access housing that is affordable and meets their families’ needs.

To meet this challenge, City staff are proposing significant updates to Ottawa’s zoning bylaw that will increase the pace at which our City builds housing.

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The new rules would make it easier for infill development in the urban areas of Ottawa, particularly around major arterial roads and transit hubs. These proposed changes would still require that proper setbacks, site servicing, and due consideration of environmental hazards be conditions of upzoning. Even so, they will go a long way toward enabling the City to meet housing targets.

However, the proposal is not without its challenges.

As proposed by staff, parking minimums will be removed across the entire City for newly built homes, businesses, and commercial establishments. While this might work for urban areas of the City where transit or walking to amenities are viable options, it is untenable for rural Ottawa.

Eighty per cent of our City’s geography consists of farm fields, rural villages, and small communities outside the urban boundary. Rideau-Jock, the ward I represent and one of five rural wards, is over 700 square kilometres. Ottawa’s entire urban area could fit within Rideau-Jock with room to spare; my ward is larger than the City of Toronto. The southwest corner of my ward is closer to the boundary of Kingston than it is to Ottawa’s City Hall.

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Given these realities, many in rural Ottawa need cars. There are no alternatives. Allowing developers to build transit-oriented developments where there is no meaningful access to transit is simply irresponsible.

Staff expect that parking will be provided to respond to market demands for parking in rural areas. Yet we have already observed this not to be true.

The current parking minimum of one spot per residence is already too low for what most rural households need. Many new communities, particularly in Richmond, have far too little parking provided, which has led to excessive amounts of street parking. These cars block emergency vehicles, school buses, snowplows, and more.

While a developer under the proposed rules could provide parking irrespective of the removal of parking minimums, another change proposed by staff effectively renders this impossible. Staff have proposed that all parking spaces for new developments must be “electric-vehicle ready.” Not only will this add thousands of dollars of cost onto new home buyers, but it will also have significant logistical issues.

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EV charging is a significant draw on our electrical grid, and homes must have the proper amount of amperage provided by Hydro Ottawa (or Hydro One in much of rural Ottawa) to facilitate that amount of draw. Our grid will need extremely costly retrofits to accommodate such a massive increase in demand.

Many new developments will be unable to offer EV-ready parking spots due to grid capacity. When combined with the removal of parking minimums, many developments may not be able to offer sufficient parking or developments may otherwise be delayed waiting for grid capacity upgrades.

I drive an electric vehicle. I believe that we should work toward expanding our grid to accommodate more of these vehicles. But this cannot be achieved by arbitrary edicts from bureaucrats who have not adequately considered the unintended consequences of their proposed policies.

Though we are at the early stages of the zoning bylaw process, the proposal from staff suggests a lack of understanding about the differences between urban and rural Ottawa.

One size does not fit all. The realities of those living in Ashton or Burritt’s Rapids are different than the needs of those living in the Glebe or Westboro. As the City works to update its zoning bylaw, it must do so in a way that better reflects the different needs of communities throughout the municipality.

Ottawa City Coun. David Brown represent Ward 21 (Rideau-Jock).

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