We are asking Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua and the Members of Council, City of Vaughan, to consider changing the city by-law to allow cars to park on Eagle Rock Way, Hill St., Station St. and any other future street in close proximity to the Maple GO station.   

 Allowing for parking on the street would provide immediate relief to the lack of spaces in the station lot! It would allow Vaughan residents to continue to commute to work without getting parking tickets!

There is a severe shortage of parking spaces at the Maple GO Train station in Vaughan Ontario. The root cause is the limited capacity of the parking lot at the station, which is simply insufficient to accommodate all the cars of the residents that commute to Toronto every day for work. There are factors that are compounding the problem, such as the ever increasing population density of Vaughan, which has a direct impact on increased daily GO ridership on the Barrie line, the concentration of jobs in downtown Toronto, etc. 

 

At some point, the lack of spots in the lot forced commuters to park their cars outside of the GO station (on the public streets). However, the City of Vaughan has consistently enforced the parking by-laws on Eagle Rock Way, Hill St., Station St. and others, ticketing any car that has been parked there for longer than 3 hours.

 

Parking enforcement on the street forced many residents to park their cars on either the Walmart Vaughan Maple SuperCenter or the Lowe’s (both stores located on Eagle Rock Way). However, these two stores are private property.  At the end of 2015, Walmart started ticketing cars parked there for the day. Lowe’s will follow suit on May 2016, practically leaving no options for parking.

 

This petition is requesting that the existing by-laws are changed to allow cars to park on Eagle Rock Way, Hill St., Station St. and any other future street in close proximity to the Maple GO station.

 

There are long term solutions coming to Vaughan: the Yonge-University-Spadina subway line extension could help to reduce the high ridership in the GO train.  Also, the creation of a Kirby Road GO Station would add an additional parking lot to the line. However, these two solutions are years away from completion.  We need a solution sooner!

 

Allowing for parking on the street would provide immediate relief to this problem! It would allow Vaughan residents to continue to commute to work without getting parking tickets!

 

Citizen concerns include:

• Vaughan residents with jobs in Toronto rely on the GO train for transportation; alternatives such as daily driving to downtown Toronto are impractical, more expensive, and have a larger ecological footprint.

 

• Vaughan residents commute to Toronto, but spend money in Vaughan; we depend on these jobs to support families and business in our communities.  

 

• Facilitating sufficient parking is a critical consideration in ensuring the investments in transit and associated ridership are maximized.

 

• Changing the by-law to allow street parking during the day will not be a deterrent to walking and cycling to the station.

 

We are asking that a new parking use is defined to allow cars to park on Eagle Rock Way, Hill St., Station St. and any other future street in close proximity to the Maple GO station.

Our simple request: We need to park our cars without fear of getting parking tickets!!!