See final paragraph - set to be the tallest building in Western Canada. The article focuses on the 14 stories of underground parking that will be included, which does seem excessive given that the SkyTrain is literally across the street.

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 years ago

    Of all the uses we could allocate surface land toward, can we agree that parking is about the worst? There’s no reason for it to see the sun, no reason for it to be seen by people, eyesore that it is.

    The Royal Columbian Hospital expansion is ‘saving money’ by not including adequate parking in its build, and the existing parking around RCH is continually a question: “where can I park”, I would regularly read on Reddit. I think we have an example of what ‘saving money’ looks like.

    And we know every penny saved DOES NOT transfer to reduced purchase price, which invariably is set at “whatever the hell we can get people to pay, plus 30%”.

    • jonjennings@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 years ago

      Absolutely - I think there’s some real estate mantra about how land is the only thing they’re not making more of. Using 18 sq m of it for possibly storing one vehicle is a heck of a waste. I saw some stat that there’s apparently 8 parking spaces per vehicle in the US - they need one at home, one at work, one at every mall that you might want to visit. So that’s 144 sq m of asphalt for storing each car.

      True re condo prices… it might work if there was competition and sufficient supply… but we all know that’s not the case.

    • zephyreks@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 years ago

      To be fair, a hospital might be one of those places where parking is legitimately necessary for accessibility reasons.

      People going to the hospital are, on average, more likely to be suffering from some chronic conditions that prevent them from biking/walking effectively.

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 years ago

        To be fair, a hospital might be one of those places where parking is legitimately necessary for accessibility reasons.

        People going to the hospital are, on average, more likely to be suffering from some chronic conditions that prevent them from biking/walking effectively.

        That’s another great point they seemed to not take into account when planning to put absolutely nothing in the potentially-6-floors they could have created under this expansion. We already see that the current care area has no parking for the regular staff there; expand the space and try to fit double the staff and non-emergency patients and their family?

        I’m not sure everyone realizes that Maple Ridge and Chilliwack and the North Shore exist; places that will likely always need a car to come from – either for support staff who don’t get paid enough to afford a 1.1m place within the train network, or for incident-related visitors who can’t handle a 90-min commute each way to go visit Grandma on the daily.