Just like lack of love can divide a family, lack of parking is dividing a North Vancouver community as Panorama Drive residents and the folks who live across the water jockey for spots.
The growing popularity of the Baden Powell Trail brought an increase of cars to Deep Cove, turning Panorama Drive into a safety hazard for emergency vehicles in the summer of 2013.
The traffic also precluded some residents from entertaining company, because visitors had nowhere to park.
"If we do not have visitors parking, we're isolated," said John Paul Stevenson, who advocated for residents-only parking at a council meeting this spring.
Council moved
swiftly to act on his request, but exactly who should be considered a resident initially proved problematic.
While residents-only parking signs were a boon to Panorama Drive
residents with no offroad parking, they were a boondoggle for Indian Arm residents who access their homes by boat.
Nearly 70 per cent of Panorama Drive residents responding to a district
survey voted for residentsonly parking. However, Indian Arm residents - including those with Panorama Drive mailing addresses - complained of not getting that survey.
"We were not included
in the initial survey which suggests either an oversight or that DNV staff do not believe we are residents of Panorama Drive," said Jeff Boniface, speaking to council at a June 9 meeting.
The District of North Vancouver recently decided to include Indian Arm residents in the residentsonly parking trial period, but that may not solve the problem because of lack of space on the road.
"We do not have the physical capacity to accommodate all of the vehicles belonging to Panorama Drive homes and Indian Arm homes," district spokeswoman Jeanine Bratina wrote in an email.
Following the trial period, the district is slated to develop a parking and traffic strategy for the neighbourhood.
While the new regulations may not solve every problem, they have cut down on the number of hikers parking on the block, according to Indian Arm resident Phil Mowatt.
"Since the signs have gone in, it's amazing how much the parking has improved," Mowatt said.
Longtime Indian Arm residents have watched parking spots disappear in recent years, according to Mowatt.
"When we moved up there, there were two lots of parking, parking at the marina, and we were allowed to park on Panorama," Mowatt said.
Space has dwindled in the increasingly expensive marina, leaving many boaters parking their secondary vehicles on Panorama Drive, according to Mowatt.
Mowatt said he's sympathetic to gridlock concerns, but wants to be sure Indian Arm residents get the same treatment as Panorama Drive's denizens.
"Indian Arm residents don't get garbage collection and we don't need new streetlights and we don't need signs and we don't complain about laneways. We really look after ourselves," he said.
The issue is unlikely to go away any time soon, according to Coun. Lisa Muri, who spoke about the problem in April.
"The Cove is never going to have sufficient parking, ever. It's the end of the road," she said.
