Handicap parking: Accessible parking at Toronto parks & rec centres

Toronto is an amazingly fun place to live and with more than 1,400 parks and close to 900 recreational facilities for the public to enjoy it’s an awesome city to live, work and play — provided you can find a place to park.

Zolo analyzed more than 300 public parking lots operated by the City of Toronto’s Parks, Forestry and Recreation division. The analysis found that less than 5% of parking spaces at these recreational facilities were designated or reserved for those with disabilities. 

This is a problem. According to Statistics Canada roughly 15% of Ontarians aged 15 or older identify as having some form of disability — slightly higher than the 13% of the nation’s population that identifies as having a disability. To put this in perspective, that means 1 in 7 Canadians report a disability. According to StatsCan, about a quarter of the disabilities relate to pain, flexibility or mobility. Next time you’re at a red light, count the cars. If there’s more than six, chances are one of the drivers identifies as having a disability.

Since Toronto is Ontario’s largest city, it’s reasonable to expect a proportionate amount of its residents live with physical disabilities. Some back-of-the-napkin math puts the estimates that at least 115,000 Toronto residents — or roughly 4% of the city’s population — must negotiate life and parking while dealing with accessibility issues.  

Now, compare this to the number of designated disabled parking spots in Parks & Rec facilities and everything seems in order, right? Not quite. From our analysis, we found that some lots have no accessible parking at all; of those that do offer designated disabled parking, half of the city-owned parking lots offer less than 4% — falling well below the demographic need. 

Turns out only three recreational facilities had parking space parity: Barbara Frum Community Centre, Stanley Park and Harrison Pool. But even those numbers can be deceiving. For example, Harrison Pool has just two parking spots — 1 regular, 1 designated for the disabled — but it qualifies as having a high-ratio of disabled parking spots. 

The facility with the highest number of accessible spots is High Park, with 31 accessible parking spaces. But when you compare this to the 551 public parking spots available in the park (and spread out across 19 lots) those 31 spots seems a bit meagre. Still, we give the park and its facilities top marks for making 5.63% of their total parking spots designated for the disabled — an above average ratio for the city.

Velanie George, the program coordinator for the StopGap Foundation, says these designated spots are especially needed for people with mobility issues.

“A lot of people who request accessibility parking might have a vehicle that’s standardized to accommodate things like wheelchairs or mobility devices.” As a result, these vehicles, and their drivers, often need larger space.  As well as being larger, these vehicles often have deployable ramps that require space in front for wheelchair access.

“It can be quite an inconvenience if there’s not enough space,” says George.

About this data:

Origin:

This data accessed was from the City of Toronto’s Open Data Catalogue, and was last updated  in September 2016.

Caveats:

• Only parking lots designated “Public” were used
• Records that were missing some or all relevant data were omitted
• “Handicap” columns with blank values are assumed to be zero;  a Toronto open data representative has been contacted for clarification, and we will update this story if necessary.

David Weisz

Toronto-based David Weisz specializes in data-driven journalism. Prior to joining Zolo, he worked at the Toronto Star, Queen's Park Briefing and Global News. He teaches data journalism at Humber College and the University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs' Fellowship in Global Journalism.