City of Toronto planning staff have been told to oppose downtown homeowners who want approval to build parking pads on the basis they need access to a charger for an electric vehicle.

Lynda Macdonald, the city’s director of community planning, sent the directive after a Jan. 13 Star story about a Parkdale man who won his appeal of a parking pad denial by arguing he planned to buy a Tesla and Toronto is officially encouraging electric vehicle (EV) adoption — an apparent first.

“In (Toronto-East York) we will not be supporting a parking pad that is otherwise unsupportable just because it is to accommodate an electric vehicle,” Macdonald wrote in the email obtained by the Star.

Applications for such pads have long been banned in downtown wards over environmental concerns — the removal of trees and concerns that hard pads increase stormwater runoff and the amount of sewage that can flow into Lake Ontario when the city’s sewer system gets overwhelmed.

Macdonald acknowledges to her planners what many, including some city councillors, are saying — Toronto has been too slow to reconcile the coming wave of EVs with the fact that many residents in houses and highrises don’t have driveways or garages where they can charge a vehicle.

“I realize that the city has not moved as quickly as we could to accommodate charging stations on streets,” Macdonald wrote, “but front yard parking that displaces soft landscaping, may take space that could accommodate a tree and exacerbates storm water runoff is not a positive step in addressing climate change — charging station or not.”

Last year Gregory Pechersky of Springhurst Avenue failed to convince the city’s committee of adjustment to let him install a front-yard parking pad. The committee upheld the moratorium, in line with advice from city staff and local Councillor Gord Perks.

Pechersky, a Tesla fan, appealed to the city’s Toronto Local Appeal Body (TLAB) which, in a late December ruling, looked more favourably on his plea to be able to cover part of his yard with a permeable surface, without any tree removal, so he can park and charge an EV there.

TLAB member Ted Yao ruled the application highlights a “legislative and policy gap” between the city’s opposition to parking pads and its initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change by, in part, trying to get Torontonians into EVs.

A new staff-proposed EV strategy for Toronto going to city council this month urges boosting the adoption rate of EV usage from 0.6 per cent now to 5 per cent by 2025 and 100 per cent by 2050.

It notes access to charging stations as a serious barrier, especially for “driveway orphans.” Council in 2017 instructed city staff and Toronto Hydro to launch a pilot project to install public charges in a handful of neighbourhoods for people with on-street parking. None have been installed. City staff say some chargers will finally be installed this year.

Saying city regulations have “not caught up to climate change imperatives,” Yao approved Pechersky’s requested variance from zoning rules, adding it met required criteria — minor in nature, desirable and appropriate use of the site, and in keeping with the general intent and purpose of the zoning bylaw and the city’s official plan.

City officials did not attend the appeal. Perks (Ward 4 Parkdale-High Park) told the Star: “Because this is a brand new instance I didn’t catch it,” and take action to have a city planner and lawyer at TLAB to argue against an EV charger as justification to override the moratorium.

Perks said he recently got council direction for city staff to oppose a similar appeal going to TLAB. “That will be my practice going forward,” said the councillor, noting that once a pad is approved the city has no way to enforce what kind of vehicle is parked upon it.

Perks, a former Greenpeace campaigner, is working on a way to plug the “loophole” that let EV charging access become grounds for a parking pad, adding he’s not convinced EVs are the best way to fight climate change.

“No one has shown me the (research) that it’s better to spend public money getting people into electric cars rather than buying everyone a bicycle and giving them a free transit pass,” he said.

In an email to the Star, Macdonald said the message she was sending planning staff with her email was “good planning needs to come first. This issue should not be defined by looking at it from the perspective of one issue superseding another — this is not about electric vehicles versus stormwater management. I believe we need to look at the big picture and make smart policy decisions based on good data and solid research.”

City planning is “committed to working with the public, continuing to grow our understanding of the issues and moving forward to build a more resilient city,” she added.

One of Perks’s colleagues, Brad Bradford in Ward 19 Beaches-East York, has some residents in East York with a parking pad moratorium and others in The Beach without one. He wants council to harmonize rules so all of them can apply for pads but be eligible only if they install hardware to allow EV charging.

RELATED STORIES GTA Plans to buy a Tesla help Parkdale homeowner win parking spot battle. Now the city is worried about the precedent

“I want your next vehicle to be an EV,” said Bradford, who worked for the city as a planner before he was elected in 2018. “The city has done a pretty poor job of getting us ready for this change, we’re way behind. We have a disconnect between our policy objectives and our regulations.

“We need pragmatic, practical solutions so we can ensure permeable paving and other requirements, and give people a practical path to compliance otherwise they’re going to circumvent the process by going to TLAB — and then we lose control.”

Sean Galbraith, who owns an urban planning firm and was not involved in the Pechersky case, predicted EVs will figure larger in city zoning rules and decisions.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“If you’re going to require parking, you need to at least have the capacity to make them electric-charging to future-proof them, I think that will be extremely common,” Galbraith said.

“The question for Toronto is how it grapples with its legacy neighbourhoods where you have a real push and pull between conflicting interests. In general terms we want electric charging and the infrastructure, but we also want to minimize front-yard parking.

“How will on-street parking (chargers) work if it’s shared, how will we handle streets where no on-street parking is allowed? These aren’t easy issues to adapt whole neighbourhoods to.”

David Rider is the Star’s City Hall bureau chief and a reporter covering city hall and municipal politics. Follow him on Twitter: @dmrider