Free parking helps keep councillors driving to city hall
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/free-parking-helps-keep-councillors…
MOST city councillors, like the majority of Winnipeggers, drive to work,
and those commutes help make driving the largest source of greenhouse gas
emissions in the city.
Despite the city’s plan to slice emissions in the coming decades, one city
hall perk makes it hard for councillors to abandon their cars — a free
parking pass.
Coun. Matt Allard (St. Boniface) says the option of free parking makes it
easy to decide to drive to work.
“One of the biggest inconveniences of commuting to work downtown is finding
that parking spot,” he said. “So not only is it tempting from a financial
perspective, because you already have a spot paid for, but also you have
the convenience of knowing that there’s going to be a spot for you as soon
as you pull in.”
But Allard is an exception, having relinquished his free parking pass in
2018.
In January that year, Allard, who chairs the public works committee that
oversees transit, pledged to take the bus to work every day for a month to
get a better understanding of the bus system. When the month came to an
end, he decided to say goodbye to his parking pass and instead walk, bike
and take the bus as much as possible.
“I kind of fell in love with the mode shift and the bus and using different
modes of transport in my everyday life,” he said. “And I found that it
didn’t make sense anymore for me to have this parking spot because I wasn’t
using it.”
A Free Press survey of city councillors found Coun. Ross Eadie (Mynarski),
who is blind, is the only other councillor who has turned down the parking
pass. Though several councillors who responded to the survey said they try
to take transit, walk or bike when possible, most indicated the nature of
their work, which often requires travelling to meetings across the city in
addition to time spent at city hall, makes it hard to give up driving.
“Much of my ward that requires my attention to attend to are in areas with
poor public transit supports,” said Coun. Shawn Nason (Transcona) in an
email.
“Demands of the job sometimes make it necessary to bring (a) car in order
to attend multiple meetings or events off-site, which is expected of
councillors,” said Coun. Brian Mayes (St. Vital).
Couns. Jeff Browaty, Kevin Klein, John Orlikow, Vivian Santos and Jason
Schreyer, as well as Mayor Brian Bowman, did not respond.
Under city policy, the mayor and councillors are offered a free, dedicated
parking space near city hall, an annual surface parking card and a monthly
$550 transportation allowance, which is to be used for mileage expenses or
taxis.
Many more city workers receive parking passes. Researchers at
Second-Street.org submitted a freedom of information request to the city
and found nearly 400 city employees are offered parking passes.
The city offers employees the option of a partially subsidized monthly bus
pass — called the eco-pass — which allows staff to take the bus at a 30 per
cent discount. Between 250 and 300 city staff purchase an eco-pass each
month, the city said in a statement.
While parking for free at work has long been considered a business standard
nationwide, some advocates suggest the time has come to rethink the policy
and instead give incentives for low-emission commuter options.
All told, residential vehicle use makes up 32 per cent of the city’s
greenhouse gas emissions, according to 2011 City of Winnipeg data. That’s
in part because more than three-quarters of Winnipeggers drive to work, and
about 80 per cent of those trips are made alone, according to Statistics
Canada.
By contrast, 16 per cent of Winnipeggers commute on the bus, and just seven
per cent use active transportation.
Mel Marginet is part of the sustainable transportation team at the
environmental non-profit organization Green Action Centre.
Over the past few decades, she said “it’s become sort of ingrained to offer
free parking for employees,” be it through subsidized parking passes or big
on-site parking lots. But at the Green Action Centre, Marginet’s team hopes
to encourage businesses to do things differently.
“There’s no such thing as free parking,” she said. “The message that sends
is that you’re considered an employee of value if you’re driving to work;
if there isn’t something of equal value to those who are not driving to
work, I would question why.”
Parking reimbursement for municipal staff cost the city $425,297 in 2021
alone, city staff said in an email. By contrast, the city has spent $27,539
on its share of the eco-pass program in the last three months. There is no
option to transfer the value of the parking pass to other modes of
transportation.
Allard said he would prefer to see the city — and other employers — offer a
more flexible transportation benefit to staff. Offering a commuting budget,
for example, that could be applied to transit, bikes or parking if
employees so choose, would ensure all commuting options are fairly
compensated.
“Flexibility would allow for Winnipeggers to do what we hope to be able to
encourage them to do by providing transportation options, whether that’s
taking the bus, biking, walking, being passengers in vehicles, taking up
the occasional car-share,” he said.
At the Green Action Centre, flexibility is a priority. Staff are offered
transit passes or an equivalent dollar value for other modes of
transportation. For some, that money is spent on parking, but others choose
to spend the benefit on bike maintenance, running shoes and other means of
getting to work.
Ultimately, changing the way people get to and from work is about
interrupting long-held habits and behaviour, Marginet said. With gas prices
on the rise and a pandemic prompting the restructuring of the workday,
Marginet said people are ready to start rethinking their daily commute.
“You have so many people for whom the price to fill up their gas tank has
more than doubled in a very short amount of time — just as they’re being
expected to go back to work and go back to doing all of the in-person
things. It’s really kind of hitting people, just the incredible personal
cost of this,” she said.
Statistics Canada shows the average price of gas jumped 43 per cent in the
last year. With Canadians dedicating almost 20 per cent of their spending
to transportation in 2019, the costs of daily driving are set to keep
rising.
“It would be very disappointing to not encourage or reward employees who
are making a healthier, more sustainable, climate-friendly choice,”
Marginet said.
“If you’re offering a privilege to people who drive, you should at least be
offering something of equal value, or perhaps more value, if you want to
look at getting your employees to shift their mode of travel.”
julia-simone.rutgers(a)freepress.mb.ca