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Pay parking's inconvenient truth

Summertime is barbeque time and nothin' says lovin' like the smell of sacred cow slowly becoming succulent over smoky, low heat. So let's gore some oxen and go face-to-face with some inconvenient truths about everyone's cause célèbre , pay parking.
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Summertime is barbeque time and nothin' says lovin' like the smell of sacred cow slowly becoming succulent over smoky, low heat. So let's gore some oxen and go face-to-face with some inconvenient truths about everyone's cause célèbre , pay parking.

Inconvenient Truth #1 : Where else did you think it came from?

As part of the rationale for pay parking, we are told, in somewhat accusatory tones, that 50 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Whistler can be directly tracked to the tailpipes of passenger vehicles. Half! Hang your heads in shame, you SUV-driving slackers.

Well, duh. Where else would they come from? It's not like we have a lot of heavy industry in the valley.

Whistler is a destination resort. Perhaps we use that phrase so often we don't stop to think about what it means. People come here from somewhere else; Whistler is their destination. Since the global economy tanked and the U.S. dollar became a speculative currency, more and more of the people who choose Whistler as their recreation destination are much-appreciated regional guests. By and large, they drive to Whistler and we're glad they do. In fact, if they didn't, a whole lot of us would be driving away from Whistler because our jobs would be gone, gone, gone.

Absent from the reducing GHG justification is the inconvenient truth that Whistler's overall GHG emissions have been ratcheting down over the past couple of years. So how big a straw man is this? Doesn't matter. GHG bad... at any level.

Which raises an interesting question. Most all of the other 50 per cent of GHG emissions come from the commercial and residential sector. How efficient is it? What steps can we take to reduce it? What might constitute the low-hanging fruit?

Would we dare encourage behavioural change in the retail sector by charging shops that keep their doors open all winter? Should Whistler Blackcomb inconvenience skiers by, for example, shutting down lifts whose electric motors malfunction instead of running them on diesel backup, as happened for an extended period this spring on Excelerator?

The inconvenient truth is this: Whistler's very existence is frivolously wasteful. To target the heart of our economic viability - people who drive to the resort and employees who make the resort run - for questionable "behavioural" change is madness. To use it as an excuse for pay parking is disingenuous... at best. If you're that worked up about GHG emissions, move to the city, live in a highrise, walk to work and agitate for the complete removal of unsustainable places like Whistler.

 

Inconvenient Truth #2 : It's the people, stupid!

While peopled ostensibly by humans, government seems to work in a lifeless vacuum of policy, ideology and the illusion of power. As has been the case with so many still-open wounds - sewage treatment plant expansion and Cheakamus Crossing vs. asphalt plant to name two - policymakers and politicians don't seem to understand the human dynamic or, if they do understand it, woefully underestimate the impact their actions might have when the unstoppable force thereof collides with the immovable objections of their victims.

The four members of the parking committee were charged with developing a pay parking plan that worked, in the face of two previous plans that can only generously be called failures. There were three rationales for pay parking: change behaviour, improve visitor experience, and act fiscally responsibly.

Changing behaviour means getting people to swap their cars for buses, bicycles or running shoes. Ironically, none of the four members of the parking committee bus, bike or walk to work. It would be interesting to know what might change their behaviour, but I digress.

Here are some inconvenient truths. The only people who religiously bus, bike or walk are people who don't own cars. Most - virtually all - people who can afford to own cars do. Once they own a car, the incremental cost of driving that car is irrelevant to most owners. With very few exceptions, busses are inconvenient and, strictly from a time-management perspective, inefficient ways of getting from here to there... especially if you're on a schedule... particularly since Whistler Transit can't manage to keep to a schedule.

Here are a few more. Many people in Whistler can't wait for the weather to get benign enough for them to ride their bikes. Once the danger of frostbite is past, they would rather ride than drive whenever possible. Riding isn't considered possible when they have to shuttle children around, pick up more than a few groceries, run multiple errands in a short time, or it's raining cats and dogs. Very, very few people will walk to work if they live more than one mile away.

So, how do you change the behavioural proclivity of people who prefer to drive a car? Based on our collective, personal experience, you eliminate all parking and run busses every five to six minutes. It worked during the Olympics. But that wouldn't be fiscally responsible, would it? So how do you change behaviour in something other than a police state, which Whistler during the Olympics most certainly was?

Well, here's how you don't do it. You don't do it by charging people less to park than it would cost to take the bus both ways. Let's see, be inconvenienced twice a day on the bus for $5 or pay less than half that to park - remember the incremental cost of the trip is irrelevant. Tough decision. You don't do it by cutting back on bus service, thus making the former equation even more lopsided.

You change behaviour by example, education, encouragement and opportunity. The Commuter Challenge is a good, if only one-week, example.

So the change behaviour argument is bogus. A smokescreen.

Enhance visitor experience? No question, the parking lots are more visitor friendly. Maybe visitors should pay to park there. Or maybe free parking is just the price of doing this kind of business. Either way, $13.50 seems over the top.

Act fiscally responsible? In your dreams. Muni hall hasn't acted fiscally responsibly about this - or many, many, many other things - for years. And now it's looking to the same suckers it always looks to for a bailout.

Well, here are some more inconvenient truths. Nobody in this town except for municipal employees is doing better today than they were a year or two ago. We don't get yearly increases and everything we buy, in case you haven't noticed, costs more today than it did last month. Our hours have been cut back, our taxes and rent have gone up, gas and groceries cost more and now you want us to pay more to come to work or to volunteer in the village or to simply spend a little of what we have left to support our neighbours' businesses.

And what part of our outrage don't you understand?

Wear the decision even if you didn't make it? Damn right you'll wear it.