Wow, crazy. At my neighbourhood school, parking enforcement is always out in full force so we just park a block or two away and walk instead of parking in a no zone and then whining about the tickets associated with doing so.
As somebody who lives in the Beaches, the sense of entitlement here is unbelievable.
I saw the FB thread about this, and it was insane how these people tried to rationalize that this was the only safe spot in the world to park to drop their kids off....
It's entitlement bordering on narcissism.
Liz Lapensee, whose son also attends Lullaboo, said a tense meeting was held last spring with local residents, parents, the daycare operator, and a representative from Bradford’s office.
One of the solutions that was floated at the meeting was adding a couple of designated drop-off spots for parents on a nearby residential street.
**“Basically the meeting went really poorly… The neighbours were just like super opposed to any type of change,” she told CP24.com.**
**“They had actually said that they would have preferred if the daycare was never built.”**
I'm not sure we're better off with the honesty, because the appropriate public shame has never truly been visited on these monsters. I'll never forget the one complaint from the Cabbagetown daycare opponent who was worried *he would have to hear children playing*.
In a proper country he would be put in stocks and pilloried in the public square.
It's funny how a lot of the same people that will gush about how great it is to live in a walkable neighborhood will also insist on driving their kids to daycare even if it's like 4 blocks away.
Yes, parking in The Beaches is a nightmare. Blocking a major artery during rush hour is not a reasonable solution.
Just fact-checking here, the place is licensed for 221 max and 52 of them are kindergarten, so in general there might be around 170 kids on the premises for most of the day.
Which is still a lot, a large daycare and enough parents doing dropoffs/pickups to cause traffic problems in the mornings and evenings.
When i was a little kid here, it was virtually unheard of to be picked up by car - the parents always walked us home
I was near my old primary school just after 2 (I think the day ends after 3) and there were ten cars waiting on the street to pick up kids - most of them SUVs and at least half of them with the engine running in an area with very clear “no idling” signs. I really dont understand
Not that people aren't pretty lazy, but I think the challenge for daycare specifically is there's enough demand that you need your kid on the waitlists before they are born. You aren't necessarily getting a spot within walking distance.
Yep, I'm currently driving my kid to daycare every day because we've been unable to find a local spot. I can't wait until he starts kindergarten so we can walk him to school.
The crazy part is, I'm sure there are plenty of parents driving their kids to daycares in my neighbourhood while I drive my kid to daycare in another neighbourhood. Everybody just has to put their kids on 20 waitlists and take whatever they can get.
Yeah not to mention some parents may have to continue en route to their workplaces which may require they drive in. Not everyone has the luxury of working in the downtown core on the TTC line.
The beaches has tons of co-ops and rentals nearby too and not all the parents of these kids are gonna be the millionaires. This daycare is part of the $10 a day program so it’s probably more of a socioeconomic mix than is being portrayed.
I signed up when I was in my first trimester in 2022 and we got into ONE daycare for when baby hit 12m. It's wild now. And it was 30 minute transit ride away.
And you are probably driving right from work so even if daycare is close you are tight on time. Yes you should park at home and walk over but when it is 5:55 and pick up is due for six you drive.
And the nearby houses are probably worth over $1.5M now, so someone that can afford that much likely can also afford help with getting their child walked home or just have private childcare. Times have changed. The parents picking up likely have a bit of a commute and time restraints.
And that home is worth as much as it is because it’s in a walkable neighbourhood. I have family who live in the Beaches and they all would bike or walk to do errands on Queen Street.
I don’t really feel sorry for these parents. A cargo bike or bike trailer would solve a bunch of their problems with drop off/pick up if walking takes too long.
I think the problem is the lack of money esp for new families where one of them is on mat leave. And esp for new families who bought a house right now because their mortgage rates are 3x of what they used to be.
For me that's like 5k of lost income a month, before extra expenses like daycare is factored in.
Parents in our neighbourhood drive their kids 150 metres to the intersection where the bus picks them up and sit idling (and blocking intersections) until their 14-year old gets ON the bus. It's fucking bonkers-town.
I’ve heard of parents following along in their SUV as their kids go trick or treating. It’s such an enormous waste of resources as well as valuable time spent being active with your child.
It doesn’t help that it seems like parents are opting to hit up affluent or desirable neighborhoods for trick and treating instead of just making a route around their own home. I would rarely go trick or treating in my own neighborhood because we’d meet up with friends who had groups of neighbourhood kids who would go from house to house together.
i live in front of a school thats in a dead end. I really dont know why parents decided to drive in this tiny ass street that is hard to back out of when the subway and streetcar is right there. it's a shit show in the morning
If your parents were walking you home at 2 or 3, that means you had a stay at home parent, or one who worked part time. That's not tenable in Toronto for most families.
The parents are driving because they have to, on their way to and from work. The neighbourhood is full of boomers who raised their families in their homes, but haven't downsized, so there's just not many families with kids in walking distance.
What about transit? It's at the end of the queen streetcar line (literally, neville loop is right there), so no one is dropping their kid off "on the way" while taking transit. And queen streetcar is a gong show right now with all the disruptions for the Ontario line.
In the Beaches? One of the most walkable neighborhoods in the city?
If dropping their kids off by car is so important to them I encourage them to move east into Scarborough or find some other place to live.
I'm certain that some of those 'idlers' have found themselves a 'Beach' address so that they can claim residency and get their children into a Beach school. My daughter had several in her class and playdates required me driving her upwards of 30 minutes outside of the neighbourhood into Scarborough to see her friends or to attend a birthday party.
I live in Hamilton. Our school started implementing a closure outside the school for 20 mins in the morning, as a pilot for safer streets. It’s been great for the school community and kids, because they can play safely outside and you can interact t with other parents.
There’s a parking lot literally 2 mins away (visible from the school). But there are still parents that complain all the time. The entitlement is crazy.
It’s weird that some people who decide to have kids feel like they are instantly entitled to do whatever they want wherever they want with absolutely no repercussions for it, as soon as they have kids.
They only care about themselves, they have very little respect for anyone else and think that they and their family are better than everyone around them.
It’s also sad that they raise their kids to act and think the same way all through life and then the cycle repeats when those kids have kids, but like in the game of broken telephone it gets worse with each cycle…
And that my friends is part of the reason we see society falling apart and noticing a complete lack of respect, common courtesy and compassion in our city and the world around us.
Usually when you get a parking ticket, you’re the problem.
These people complaining are actually outing themselves for being what’s wrong with the world, the parking situation is fine, the biggest problem is they all spawned children before figuring out the world doesn’t revolve around them.
You do realize all they’re asking for is a few parking spots to be made available for a drop off and pick up zone, and it’s the boomer home owners nearby shooting this down. Technically Lullaboo should have had some foresight and started this process with the city to add parking when they expanded into the nearby building.
However your proclaimed worldview of people with children being the cause of society collapsing (lol) says everything about your anti social disposition.
When I lived in Toronto, I did not have a car. I used TTC or used car share.
I've now been priced out of the City I work in, and have to have a car as part of my job position, so I need to drive into Toronto, and then throughout the city to various sites. Then I get to listen to people like this, talking about how the Gardiner should be tolled - but only for outsiders, not for Torontonians. Peak entitlement. The people who quite literally least need to use a car, who are already on average, quite wealthy, expect to be able to use the Gardiner toll-free, while everyone else is tolled.
The NERVE of those neighbours watching on their lawns telling people when they’re illegally parked, almost like they’re trying to help them avoid a ticket.
It's amazing to see people's first and natural reaction to this. I live on a street with a dance studio on it and when I tell parents that one side of the street is permit parking only, the response 90% of the time is some variation of "what are you going to do about it?"
I started off trying to be helpful but after almost 10 years, now I just call parking enforcement.
Even if it is - block your fellow cars, not bikes, pedestrians, and those who have mobility devices.
A car can find another route, or they can wait in their comfortable chariot. How does a senior get by a car curbhopping? A wheelchair? A mobility scooter? A pedestrian with any sort of muscular dystrophy condition? Someone on crutches? other *children*? It's fucking wild.
>Can they not park a block away and then walk? I don't really understand what the problem is here.
You should have seen the uproar when I made a suggestion in another post about making school zones car-free.
Some people were claiming they'd be prisons in their own home.
Others can't bear the thought of walking their kids in the snow even though they walk further at Costco.
In that area it's much more than a block away, parking is extremely hard to find.
"Guirguis said daycare staff regularly receive complaints from neighbours about not only parking, but noise from musical instruments and lighting at the facility.
“We were happy to pay for spots and work with the neighbours, but neighbours just told us to close and move to another property,” Guirguis added."
They've been trying to purchase parking but nobody wants them to be there so nobody has sold a spot.
Most east end streets have at least one neighbor who \*thinks\* they own the spot in front of their house, even they do not, and I imagine this is even more prevalent closer to the beach where parking is a shit show more often.
When I street parked, my neighbour left a passive aggressive note on my car about how I should leave that spot for "people who actually live on \[streetname\]"
I can only imagine her surprise when my response note made it clear I \*did\* live on the same street. I usually parked on a perpendicular street because it was less of a walk for me. Insane that someone would think zone parking is anything but a free for all, even more insane that they'd use their neighbours as an excuse for what was clearly a possessiveness of "their" parking spot.
To get on street parking in that area of the beach you usually have to get a parking permit because a lot of those houses don't actually have parking access on their property. They are more snug lots and don't often have driveways or garages so most people actually get permanent permits park to park on the street. I know people who have had to get permits for spots a 15 minute walk away from their home because there were no available spots closer.
So while there may be occasional houses that do have driveway access or other commercial buildings that have parking spots available it seems no one is selling any for this daycare for this purpose.
There's virtually no parking spaces in the area to be sold
The daycare claims nobody is selling them non existent spots because the neighbors don't want them there.
They had parking and they removed it to expand the centre
Yup, it's the neighbours fault...
One has nothing to do with the other though.
You can more info here: https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation/applying-for-a-parking-permit/residential-on-street-parking/
It’s typically by permit only. Some houses have driveways, others don’t. There’s always competition for spots and people who believe they’re entitled to specific spots near their homes.
It's not though, I park on Nursewood all the time, at least once a week in the mornings when I drive out there to take my dog to the beach. I've never had any difficulty whatsoever finding a spot.
It's actually kind of a subtext of the article, they could park on nearby streets but there is an element of the local residents who think they own the street parking spot in front of their house going on as well. There's no legal reason they can't park in an open spot on Kingswood for example, the daycare is asking them not to because of the local residents.
If you read the article you'd see that in the Beaches, homeowners need to apply and pay for street parking permits. Most of the homes on that street do not have parking pads or driveways. If they sell their spot to the daycare, where will they park. It is not a tenable solution.
.
Sorry, but that's just false. All of the local streets in that area are no parking from 12am-7am except by permit. Local residents can pay for a permit that allows them to park there between 12am and 7am. The rest of the time, anyone can park on those streets.
Street parking there is no different than anywhere else in the city - street spots don’t belong to anyone. All the permit lets you do is park overnight and not get ticketed.
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What’s the point of driving if they still have to walk 5-10 mins and pay $4 just to do so? Parking in Toronto is out of control and I’m shocked at the comments on this post. Also drop the entitlement nonsense. Being a parent is a full time job and whether you agree with it, who cares. The facf of the matter is they are the next generation and parents have the responsibility of ensuring they are active & productive members of society- for everyone’s benefit.
The residents on the adjoining streets have voted down designated pick up/drop off and Bradford^2 doesn’t want to torpedo a future mayoral campaign over a fucking daycare
> “Basically the meeting went really poorly… The neighbours were just like super opposed to any type of change,” she told CP24.com.
> “They had actually said that they would have preferred if the daycare was never built.
LMAO. The NIMBYs who are too entitled to follow rules got outfoxed by the more powerful NIMBYs.
This is such classic Beach behaviour. I live in the Beach and it irritates me to no end that people here are so conservative about any kind of change that they’ve NIMBY’d it into irrelevance. Opposition to any kind of density or transit improvements is so intense that we’ve created a transit desert car gridlock hellzone that is no longer the draw it used to be.
I grew up in the Beaches, and while you're not wrong about it being a very NIMBY area, there have been a lot of mid-rise condos built there in the last 10 years - far more than in the 20+ years prior, and all of Queen St E has roadside patios throughout the Summer.
> there have been a lot of mid-rise condos built there in the last 10 years
Very few of these have been in the Beaches. More like the Upper Beaches. Regardless, residents opposed any them every step of the way.
That's not what's happening. It is an absolute mess when all the parents decide to start picking their kids up between 4:30 and 6pm. It is also quite dangerous...I've seen it myself where a parent will dart across the street with two kids dodging cars. The business owners did not think this through at all.
I used to live there and a crosswalk wouldn't necessarily solve the problem either. I have seen parents park their cars blocking the curb cut on the sidewalk, and more than once was nearly clipped by someone running the stop sign and not looking around the corner they were turning.
There is plenty of non-permit parking within a few blocks. People can hop out, walk a block or two, and walk back. The solution here is for people in general to stop being so precious about needing parking right in front of the business they are going to.
All Brad Bradford does is complain about Olivia Chow when you meet him, even when the issue is completely unrelated. He has no interest in coming up with real solutions to the area when there is problems.
Entitled idiots.
This is one of the most walkable neighbourhoods in the city.
> She noted that there is also no crosswalk in the area for parents to cross Queen Street safely.
Except for the one 1 block west at Silver Birch, OH, and the one 2 blocks east at Neville Park. Both of which are also at Streetcar stops.
There is also parking on any of the side streets both north and south of Queen, and the Valumart at Silver Birch has a lot.
The world does not revolve around you. You can not park your 7 seater 2 ton SUV at the front door blocking the streetcar and rush hour traffic just because you're too fucking entitled to walk 30m.
The walkability of the neighbourhood is irrelevant to most of the parents dropping their kids off because they don't live in the area. Competition for daycare spots if fierce, and Lullaboo is a great daycare. The neighbourhood is full of old and retired folks who raised *their* families there, but now there's just not many families with kids in walking distance.
There *is not* parking on the north or south side of Queen there. That's the entire problem. There's some green P parking that becomes available at 9AM, but before that is not legal parking because it's a rush hour zone. That's where these parents getting tickets are parking.
That valumart lot is for valumart patrons, and I suspect you haven't walked a pair of daycare age kids that distance without a stroller? The prospect of doing it daily during your commute turns a 5 minute drop off into something much longer and stressful.
You CAN park on Willow, Silver Birch, Scarborough, Munroe Park, Kingswood, AND Neville.
You are allowed to park on the south side of Queen in the AM starting at 7am until 4pm, and parking is allowed from 9am until Midnight on the north side of Queen (pay required 9am-6pm) so quit your bullshit.
The valumart doesn't have gate arms or parking validation, so the ~10 minutes to get the kids isn't a big deal and would likely go unnoticed.
>The prospect of doing it daily during your commute turns a 5 minute drop off into something much longer and stressful.
And there it is, entitled "I have to block everyone else because MY KIDS are a burden on me".
You made the choice to have kids.
You are making the choice to put them in daycare to go off and work a job.
Why should you be allowed to break the law and delay 100s of people because it's inconvenient to walk your spawn 50m from a side street.
The competition for spots is a valid issue, but that's for the parents to deal with - I do have empathy for them. At the same time, the City is required to follow policy, laws and regulations. I also have empathy for the enforcement officers that must be real sick of dealing with the same problem over and over again. I agree that the walkable nature of the neighborhood is not relevant in a practical sense for the people in the article, at least not immediately. Perhaps encouraging walking drop-offs is something for the daycare to consider further.
I also wonder if, perhaps, the daycare expanded without considering this and could scale down a bit to accommodate a drop-off spot on their property, perhaps in exchange for some accommodation from the City. That could help resolve both concerns until a more comprehensive solution is available. Bickering really isn't going to do much and the parties seem to have the same desire for safety - Coun. Bradford might be wise to attempt some form of mediation beyond a community meeting.
It is an issue that the daycare and city are at fault for. However, daycare spots are in dire need in this city and the expansion was extremely needed. The centre has nearly 300 spots and there is a 2.5 year waitlist currently. The ministry also dictates how much outdoor space (to the square foot per child) is needed. So, they cannot just downsize.
What if they assigned pickup times in a staggered fashion by groups based on when parents can get there? Group A pickup 4:30pm, B 4:45pm, C 5pm, D 5:15 etc Then at least you only have partial mayhem.
Also some kind of street allowance for pickup between specific times, only between posted signs wouldn’t absolutely break the flow of traffic (people learn their commuting route and generally adapt - see: city wide construction).
I live very close to this daycare.
A few points.
1) They had ample parking for the daycare and removed it to accommodate more kids. I understand this decision/their motivation.
2) The spots that they wanted to use for drop off parking are actually primarily occupied by renters in a building just across the street from the daycare on Kingswood. I have a driveway. I don't personally give a shit about those spots. Most houses on Kingswood have ample drive ways so I suspect the majority complaining about those spots were in fact renters. I understand their POV. It would suck to have to move my car in the morning because your daycare wanted more spots.
3) I've actually found the daycare pretty accommodating. I contacted them about the floodlights at night/weekend and to their credit they turned them off. I would consider my relationship with the owners of the daycare amicable. Neutral at worst.
4) re: noise. I personally don't give a shit and am impacted more than most.
5) My driveway gets blocked all the time but most are courteous enough to have someone in the car/move when I request them to do so. If I don't need my car I don't generally care.
All in all this is a very difficult situation. As a parent myself I understand how hard it is to find parking for daycare dropoffs. On the other hand the daycare eliminated ~6 parking spots in an expansion of the grounds and then wanted people on the street to agree to move their cars early in the morning to accommodate their business. I find that a pretty unreasonable ask; even though it does not impact me personally.
I am not sure what the solve is.
A lot of the comments here are saying how the parents are so lazy/unreasonable but as a parent who deals with the chaotic morning routine/drop off every day, like I get it. It is a problem. I also don't know what the solution should be but I empathize with the parents. If my kids went to this daycare, I think I would just have to find a new one. Seems this daycare can only accommodate families who live within walking distance.
I also empathize with the parents. I have 3 kids/have gone through the "fun" of drop offs. This is frankly a problem at EVERY daycare I know of. This one is just a bit more extreme than others because Queen is a shit show and dangerous
Another issue is the rage baiting in the article. I suspect by
>On any given morning, Lapensee said it would not be unusual to see some residents standing on their lawns, telling parents where they can and can’t park.
They're talking about people who park in between two driveways (not actually a spot and inconveniences both houses) for instance. It's also not always clear that some driveways are driveways.
Also stuff like...
> “We were happy to pay for spots and work with the neighbours, but neighbours just told us to close and move to another property,” Guirguis added.
Doesn't really make a lot of sense. I don't want their money-- I want my parking spot/driveway. I suspect the renters who don't have driveways would prefer a parking spot to the Daycares' money too.
I think the only semi-realistic solution is some exception on Queen. As others have noted people will abuse this and it'll be a shit show, but it already is and I don't see any other solve personally. The good news is that Westbound in the morning is busy but this spot is so far East that it could be worse.
This is a smart idea re: Queen. This is the beginning of Queen street, and the ‘rush hour’ traffic is minor that far east. Most of that section of Queen directly in front of Lullaboo should be 5 min drop off. Sounds like that would be Bradfords job, but he’s useless.
There's no rush hour of car traffic in the morning at all to speak of along that section. If they just removed the "rush hour" prohibition on parking along the stretch from Kingswood to Scarborough road, and made that a designated drop zone from 7AM to 9AM, and 4PM to 6PM, it would be fine. No rush hour impact at all.
I'm a parent of 2 toddlers going to daycare and I don't see the issue. There's no parking in front of ours. All of the side streets are packed. I just drive around until I find a spot and walk over. Problem solved.
The daycare around the corner from our place and the one in close proximity of my yoga studio are both RIDICULOUS during drop off/pick up time. I have almost been run over by parents panicking that they won’t get a “spot” or legit just park in the middle of a one way street blocking everyone and anyone - oh but it’s “just for 2 minutes!!!”.
Easy job for the parking officers to get their quota.
>“Parents are left with no other choice because there's no parking," she said.
“Parents are left with no other CONVENIENT choice because there's no parking UNLESS THEY WALK A FEW METERS,"
I tried to fix that for her.
Exactly! Convenient choice. I resent that they are trying to drum up sympathy for this issue. I also like how she states at the end "it's only 5 minutes" ...it's never 5 minutes it's closer to 15 minutes.
All people live in their own bubble where their "issues or problems" seem absolutely the most important thing that needs to be dealt with.
But some are also so deluded into believing that their "inconvenience" is a problem that the rest of us should help them solve.
"The few parking spots that were available at the back of the property were repurposed to create a larger outdoor play area when the facility was expanded." I guess they shouldn't have expanded without a better plan for parking.
It’s ultimately a problem with lack of more quality daycares and with transit. My kid’s daycare has kids coming from far out of the neighbourhood and there’s little choice but for them to be driven sometimes.
If we had more daycares in more neighbourhoods, and other better transportation options - like better/more prevalent public transit, or protected bike lanes and spaces for child-carrying bicycles/trailers/cargo bikes, this would be less of an issue.
Thanks for this reasonable take, our current daycare is a 30 minute transit ride which can vary wildly if I can even get ON the streetcar as it is. Less than half the infants in our daycare live in the local community. The rest of us have to TTC or drive in.
Yep - and I bet if you’ve got a stroller or even without it adds to the difficulty!
I count myself very lucky that we are walking distance to ours. When my kid starts at elementary school, it’s a longer walk to the point that we might end up driving sometimes, but there’s no bus routes near so the options are limited.
The problem is we’ll ultimately come up to a shortage of early childhood educators even if all the facilities we wanted and hypothetical spots popped up tomorrow because it’s all but impossible to make a comfortable living as one in the GTA unless you have stayed in the same apartment for decades or live in a multigenerational home.
Im going to throw an idea out to these parents as a parent myself who doesn't own a car and needs to drop two kids under 5 to daycare everyday...
Have you considered walking or biking your kids to daycare?
No no no, that's silly. Nevermind
I mean, sure if you live close enough to the daycare. But with all the competition around daycares, I think a lot of these families are not within walking distance. And personally, I just don't trust myself biking with a baby in tow on city streets.
This is a real problem and I don't know what the solution should be. I would probably just try to find a different daycare.
Exactly...I told this to one parent and with child in arm, he told me to shut the f@#& up and mind my own business. So many of these parents are just self entitled assholes.
The Catholic school near my place is always a free for all - parking wherever, double parking, parents darting out between cars into traffic, sometimes dragging their kids. It's amazing no one has been hit yet.
I live on this street. It's one way south of Queen E. The daycare is on the west corner and a primary school a few houses down is on the east side. Cars waiting to pick up kids park on both sides of the street. Rear left passenger doors open while parents put the kids in the car seat while bending over with their bums sticking out. Dangerous. It starts at 3 pm until 6 pm. Yes. It's a safety issue as well as it is illegal.
Do any other scofflaws other than drivers ever get sympathetic articles written about them?
I wonder if CP24 raking in $$ from auto advertising has anything to do with it.
this is kind of funny due to Cafe TO.
Queen street is 4 lanes here with 2 outside lanes for parking. During the morning commute the 2 lanes into downtown have to be free to allow for better commuting between 7-9. And the two lanes going away from downtown have to be free from 4-6 for the same reason.
The Biggest farce is Cafe TO makes this all useless. If each block has one patio on the street then you erase all value of not allowing parking on the street.
So I kind of understand these parents frustration of not being able to park for 1 minute to get their kid out and to the door as the street cafes make the entire purpose for preventing parking effectivity void.
The really odd thing is that this is one of the single most walkable areas in Toronto, with plenty of bike paths, wide sidewalks and its own downtown. We almost never need a vehicle to do anything here as everything is within a couple of kms's and easily walk or bike-able.
I'm guessing the people doing drop off don't live in the neighborhood is one of the biggest issues here.
I just saw an SUV parked at a bus stop. Two women were helping a senior citizen out of his wheelchair into the SUV. Cafe TO swallowed up most of the parking. Dundas W @ Keele is now a conga line while Cafe TO is allowed
lol the homeowners on Kingswood shouldn’t get a vote on creating a drop-off area on their street.
I’m so tired of NIMBY’s whining that sidewalks, cross walks, stop signs, and parking rules “ruin the feel of the neighborhood”. Just fuck off.
Seriously harassing parents for parking on “their” street.
Safety should trump NIMBY’s
As someone who doesn't drive it blows my mind how disabled people feel without their right to use their car in any instance possible.
Maybe people should car pool, bike, walk or just park further away?
> Drivers with accessibility permits are permitted to park in No Parking zones
Not between 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m, when you would be picking up or dropping off someone from a daycare.
[Source](https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation/sidewalk-tours-wayfinding/accessible-streets/accessible-parking-permits/)
Also this is hilarious: No overnight parking between the hours of 2:00 a.m. – 6:00 a.m., from December 1 to March 31 in the former area of North York only
So, the city needs to fix this "problem" because the people that enrolled their kids into this private daycare didn't bother to consider the parking situation beforehand?
This is like people that buy electric cars first and then worry about where they're going to charge it.
Profit over people
Did the daycare owners plan for a drop- off zone before opening up the facility? Will they plan for any when they develop the building 2 doors to the west? Or just let neighbours/parents blame each other as they've done to-date?
Why does the Ministry of Education Child Care Services standards not include parent child safety at pickup and drop off? They're responsible for the permits for expansion.
Why does city zoning not exchange the queen street metered spots for a 10 min drop-off zone? Loss revenue for parking can be recovered thru higher property taxes to the daycare who benefits and profits from this upgrade.
The single short notice meeting should have been productive with everyone asking the city for these changes. Instead the daycare owners stated to a room full of angry parents that the few local residents stopped the parking request. This is bs. No resident said "no daycare here" but the owner did say "would you be happier if we weren't here!". The jeering that resulted washed out any meaningful discussion and assumptions were made. The parents were primed to attack by daycare's letters. The local residents were ambushed. The daycare owner agreed to pay for a traffic study, did that happen? Who is the villain? Note, some parents started to realize that this safety issue was created by the daycare not planning for safe arrival and departure. It was a decision to put the problem out there for someone else to solve, and solve for free to the daycare budget.
Parents, We're all neighbours and parents who've experienced daycare pains and costs. We've been divided by someone who will bill you monthly and each time you're late at pickup. Who didn't bother to consider your safety when outside their doors. Who continues to blame those neighbors you say hello to as you pass by. Who will expand their business and pass the cost to you in more parking tickets. When do we start asking them to contribute back to the community by paying for your parking tickets and setting up a drop off zone on queen street in front of their commercial buildings?
This article's author didn't bother to ask local residents their views, confirm the meeting discussion/mood or consult the Ministry or City Zoning responsible parties. One mislead parent gets the podium. There has not been a second meeting with all impacted parties. Balanced reporting takes time. Do better.
What a bunch of crybabies! Parking in a no stopping zone and then contacting the politicians and the media when you get a ticket for it. Theres multiple different side streets they could park on, but no, they're gonna illegally park 10 metres from the entrance and complain when they get punished
First they decide 150$ is the amount they're willing to risk for parking illegally, and now they're pissed that they're getting caught and have to pay it.
>On any given morning, Lapensee said it would not be unusual to see some residents standing on their lawns, telling parents where they can and can’t park.
>“The neighbours have been complaining incessantly about this,” she said.
I want to live in a rich person's head for a day. Mind-boggling.
I lost all respect for daycare parents after watching at a different location one pull her Armada diagonally in front of other already double parked parents fully blocking a road and ignoring the about 10’car horn going off as she slowly loaded her kid into the thing while blocking a 2 lane road to/from a busy grocery store… with parking spaces reserved literally across said street that were empty.
Last straw for me, never was that inconsiderate…my kids walked or got strollered from parking.
At the *end* of the most screwed up line in the city. You'd have to get to the Queen line somewhere west of the daycare (useless if you live east of it), and then double back. And the queen line is absolute shit right now due to Ontario line construction.
Unfortunately parking around schools and childcare centres is a complete gong show and it has been for a long time. I don’t know the solution to the overall problem but not being willing to come together and come up with solutions together is ridiculous.
I wish parking enforcement would do this to AMG public school on Dufferin....everyone day Dufferin is completely bottlenecked b/c of parents, theres plenty of parking in the neighborhood but God forbid having to walk five minutes to pick your kid up.
Brad Bradford:
> “Over my time in office, I’ve been firm in my belief that local residents should decide what to do about parking on their street.”
It's not *their* street, it belongs to all of us. Having a place where people can unload kids for daycare parking is a public good, and Bradford is abdicating his responsibilities in a politically expedient way by giving local residents a veto on it. For that matter, so is the rest of City Council if they let him.
(Loading and unloading on Queen St in a rush hour no-stopping zone is also not tenable.)
This is nothing. Check out Alexandra Park daycare ([street view](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xHxnynVs86Lk9Eqb8?g_st=ac)) where there's a dedicated pickup/drop-off section that allows for for 10 minute parking, except it's almost always taken up by asshole residents with handicap permits who can't be bothered to park across the one-lane street.
“On any given morning, Lapensee said it would not be unusual to see some residents standing on their lawns, telling parents where they can and can’t park.”
People in the beaches are so awful it’s laughable. God forbid someone park for 10 minutes in front of your house to drop off a child.
On the other hand, my street has incredibly limited parking because it's always half under construction, but all the school bus drivers feel entitled to take up two or three spots instead of parking at the school, where the teachers' lot is half-empty because the teachers use the TTC.
But to get back on topic... the Beaches have world-class NIMBY arguments. Also, one of my friends over there just got a nasty note from the school because she lets her 10yo walk by themselves a whopping 3 blocks to the school instead of participating in the SUV rodeo like !?!?
I’m from Ottawa. Looking at street view, I find it odd to see som many small buildings in a road covered by street cars. Isn’t this a major transit route? I would expect taller buildings.
i dunno
that's just my guess that a lot of streets downtown still have their old small buildings instead of having them all knocked down to build big high-rises.
there's usually also rules like you can't build a new building that's taller than the current tallest building on the street or it can only be X amount taller than the current tallest building on the street. that's probably another explanation for why the buildings there are so stumpy.
This is the Toronto reality. City council wants the city to be carless. All new developments have NO minimums for parking. Even in suburbs like Toronto.
These issues are only going to get worse over time. The reality is people drive in the city and the planners want us all to bike our kids to daycare…
The parking situation at the school and daycare on my street in the west end is out of control. Since when is it okay to park your suv on the sidewalk forcing pedestrians into the street? The entitlement is unbelievable - I can’t help think of them as children dropping off their kids… I drive and have a kid, but that doesn’t give me any special privileges as far as I know.
Boo hoo. Why is it always 30 and 40-something parents in this city that complain the most about how hard their lives are, when they are often the most privileged people?
Welcome to my entitled neighbourhood.
I get it; you're rushing to get out the door and on your way to work....you've got your child's daycare right on your route and you're just going to pop in for a minute, right? Well, multiply your minute by countless other parents.
It's not any different on some of the side streets close to schools (St. Denis for example)...let's all clog up Spruce Hill and Balsam Avenue because you cannot possibly walk your kids to school. Y'all need to understand that the rules apply to everyone....kids or no kids. (By the way, I walked my kid to school and picked her up every day....no matter the weather or my working schedule, until she was old enough to walk the route herself).
Everyone seriously needs to go for a 5-10 minute walk at the beginning of every day, that way, walking a block or two when it’s the obvious solution to one’s problem doesn’t seem so out of reach.
Wow, crazy. At my neighbourhood school, parking enforcement is always out in full force so we just park a block or two away and walk instead of parking in a no zone and then whining about the tickets associated with doing so.
As somebody who lives in the Beaches, the sense of entitlement here is unbelievable. I saw the FB thread about this, and it was insane how these people tried to rationalize that this was the only safe spot in the world to park to drop their kids off.... It's entitlement bordering on narcissism.
Liz Lapensee, whose son also attends Lullaboo, said a tense meeting was held last spring with local residents, parents, the daycare operator, and a representative from Bradford’s office. One of the solutions that was floated at the meeting was adding a couple of designated drop-off spots for parents on a nearby residential street. **“Basically the meeting went really poorly… The neighbours were just like super opposed to any type of change,” she told CP24.com.** **“They had actually said that they would have preferred if the daycare was never built.”**
Yep peak toronto right there lol
No. Peak BEACHES! Edit: No, I’m not going to call it Beach or the beach or bitch or anything else
> They had actually said that they would have preferred if the daycare was never built Beaches <=> Cabbagetown
at least they're being... honest?... and not trying to say they want to preserve a 10 year old tree or something.
I'm not sure we're better off with the honesty, because the appropriate public shame has never truly been visited on these monsters. I'll never forget the one complaint from the Cabbagetown daycare opponent who was worried *he would have to hear children playing*. In a proper country he would be put in stocks and pilloried in the public square.
Wow. I guess the sound of children playing might have covered up the sound of the cars he needs to hear
It's expected from a community that forces most businesses to close by 6pm 7 days a week
It's funny how a lot of the same people that will gush about how great it is to live in a walkable neighborhood will also insist on driving their kids to daycare even if it's like 4 blocks away. Yes, parking in The Beaches is a nightmare. Blocking a major artery during rush hour is not a reasonable solution.
There are 300 spots at this daycare. These families do not live within walking distance.
Just fact-checking here, the place is licensed for 221 max and 52 of them are kindergarten, so in general there might be around 170 kids on the premises for most of the day. Which is still a lot, a large daycare and enough parents doing dropoffs/pickups to cause traffic problems in the mornings and evenings.
There is no kindergarten here. It only goes up to preschool. But, yes, it is still a very large centre.
When i was a little kid here, it was virtually unheard of to be picked up by car - the parents always walked us home I was near my old primary school just after 2 (I think the day ends after 3) and there were ten cars waiting on the street to pick up kids - most of them SUVs and at least half of them with the engine running in an area with very clear “no idling” signs. I really dont understand
Not that people aren't pretty lazy, but I think the challenge for daycare specifically is there's enough demand that you need your kid on the waitlists before they are born. You aren't necessarily getting a spot within walking distance.
Yep, I'm currently driving my kid to daycare every day because we've been unable to find a local spot. I can't wait until he starts kindergarten so we can walk him to school. The crazy part is, I'm sure there are plenty of parents driving their kids to daycares in my neighbourhood while I drive my kid to daycare in another neighbourhood. Everybody just has to put their kids on 20 waitlists and take whatever they can get.
Yeah not to mention some parents may have to continue en route to their workplaces which may require they drive in. Not everyone has the luxury of working in the downtown core on the TTC line. The beaches has tons of co-ops and rentals nearby too and not all the parents of these kids are gonna be the millionaires. This daycare is part of the $10 a day program so it’s probably more of a socioeconomic mix than is being portrayed.
I signed up when I was in my first trimester in 2022 and we got into ONE daycare for when baby hit 12m. It's wild now. And it was 30 minute transit ride away.
And you are probably driving right from work so even if daycare is close you are tight on time. Yes you should park at home and walk over but when it is 5:55 and pick up is due for six you drive.
And the nearby houses are probably worth over $1.5M now, so someone that can afford that much likely can also afford help with getting their child walked home or just have private childcare. Times have changed. The parents picking up likely have a bit of a commute and time restraints.
Not really because they likely spent all their money on a house. lol
And that home is worth as much as it is because it’s in a walkable neighbourhood. I have family who live in the Beaches and they all would bike or walk to do errands on Queen Street. I don’t really feel sorry for these parents. A cargo bike or bike trailer would solve a bunch of their problems with drop off/pick up if walking takes too long.
I think the problem is the lack of money esp for new families where one of them is on mat leave. And esp for new families who bought a house right now because their mortgage rates are 3x of what they used to be. For me that's like 5k of lost income a month, before extra expenses like daycare is factored in.
Parents in our neighbourhood drive their kids 150 metres to the intersection where the bus picks them up and sit idling (and blocking intersections) until their 14-year old gets ON the bus. It's fucking bonkers-town.
I’ve heard of parents following along in their SUV as their kids go trick or treating. It’s such an enormous waste of resources as well as valuable time spent being active with your child. It doesn’t help that it seems like parents are opting to hit up affluent or desirable neighborhoods for trick and treating instead of just making a route around their own home. I would rarely go trick or treating in my own neighborhood because we’d meet up with friends who had groups of neighbourhood kids who would go from house to house together.
i live in front of a school thats in a dead end. I really dont know why parents decided to drive in this tiny ass street that is hard to back out of when the subway and streetcar is right there. it's a shit show in the morning
If your parents were walking you home at 2 or 3, that means you had a stay at home parent, or one who worked part time. That's not tenable in Toronto for most families. The parents are driving because they have to, on their way to and from work. The neighbourhood is full of boomers who raised their families in their homes, but haven't downsized, so there's just not many families with kids in walking distance. What about transit? It's at the end of the queen streetcar line (literally, neville loop is right there), so no one is dropping their kid off "on the way" while taking transit. And queen streetcar is a gong show right now with all the disruptions for the Ontario line.
have a wild guess or assumption why someone might need to drive to pick up their children
In the Beaches? One of the most walkable neighborhoods in the city? If dropping their kids off by car is so important to them I encourage them to move east into Scarborough or find some other place to live.
You cant assume that they all live within walking distance
You clearly have not tried getting a daycare spot within the past 20 years.
I'm certain that some of those 'idlers' have found themselves a 'Beach' address so that they can claim residency and get their children into a Beach school. My daughter had several in her class and playdates required me driving her upwards of 30 minutes outside of the neighbourhood into Scarborough to see her friends or to attend a birthday party.
even with primary schools, people might go to a further one for a lottery program like french immersion
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I live in Hamilton. Our school started implementing a closure outside the school for 20 mins in the morning, as a pilot for safer streets. It’s been great for the school community and kids, because they can play safely outside and you can interact t with other parents. There’s a parking lot literally 2 mins away (visible from the school). But there are still parents that complain all the time. The entitlement is crazy.
It’s weird that some people who decide to have kids feel like they are instantly entitled to do whatever they want wherever they want with absolutely no repercussions for it, as soon as they have kids. They only care about themselves, they have very little respect for anyone else and think that they and their family are better than everyone around them. It’s also sad that they raise their kids to act and think the same way all through life and then the cycle repeats when those kids have kids, but like in the game of broken telephone it gets worse with each cycle… And that my friends is part of the reason we see society falling apart and noticing a complete lack of respect, common courtesy and compassion in our city and the world around us. Usually when you get a parking ticket, you’re the problem. These people complaining are actually outing themselves for being what’s wrong with the world, the parking situation is fine, the biggest problem is they all spawned children before figuring out the world doesn’t revolve around them.
You do realize all they’re asking for is a few parking spots to be made available for a drop off and pick up zone, and it’s the boomer home owners nearby shooting this down. Technically Lullaboo should have had some foresight and started this process with the city to add parking when they expanded into the nearby building. However your proclaimed worldview of people with children being the cause of society collapsing (lol) says everything about your anti social disposition.
Right, these parents are too lazy to do that probably
When I lived in Toronto, I did not have a car. I used TTC or used car share. I've now been priced out of the City I work in, and have to have a car as part of my job position, so I need to drive into Toronto, and then throughout the city to various sites. Then I get to listen to people like this, talking about how the Gardiner should be tolled - but only for outsiders, not for Torontonians. Peak entitlement. The people who quite literally least need to use a car, who are already on average, quite wealthy, expect to be able to use the Gardiner toll-free, while everyone else is tolled.
Walk? Are you crazy.
Can they not park a block away and then walk? I don't really understand what the problem is here.
It’s their human right to be able to pull their SUV’s right up to the entrance to unload their kids!
The NERVE of those neighbours watching on their lawns telling people when they’re illegally parked, almost like they’re trying to help them avoid a ticket.
It's amazing to see people's first and natural reaction to this. I live on a street with a dance studio on it and when I tell parents that one side of the street is permit parking only, the response 90% of the time is some variation of "what are you going to do about it?" I started off trying to be helpful but after almost 10 years, now I just call parking enforcement.
Must be Pegasus
At our school drivers literally park on the sidewalk. _YOUR ESS EWE VEE isn't that wide._ /facepalm
Even if it is - block your fellow cars, not bikes, pedestrians, and those who have mobility devices. A car can find another route, or they can wait in their comfortable chariot. How does a senior get by a car curbhopping? A wheelchair? A mobility scooter? A pedestrian with any sort of muscular dystrophy condition? Someone on crutches? other *children*? It's fucking wild.
Or, seemingly more often, kid You have to wonder how much could be resolved by just organizing car pools...
>Can they not park a block away and then walk? I don't really understand what the problem is here. You should have seen the uproar when I made a suggestion in another post about making school zones car-free. Some people were claiming they'd be prisons in their own home. Others can't bear the thought of walking their kids in the snow even though they walk further at Costco.
In that area it's much more than a block away, parking is extremely hard to find. "Guirguis said daycare staff regularly receive complaints from neighbours about not only parking, but noise from musical instruments and lighting at the facility. “We were happy to pay for spots and work with the neighbours, but neighbours just told us to close and move to another property,” Guirguis added." They've been trying to purchase parking but nobody wants them to be there so nobody has sold a spot.
Is on-street parking privately owned in the area or something?
Most east end streets have at least one neighbor who \*thinks\* they own the spot in front of their house, even they do not, and I imagine this is even more prevalent closer to the beach where parking is a shit show more often.
When I street parked, my neighbour left a passive aggressive note on my car about how I should leave that spot for "people who actually live on \[streetname\]" I can only imagine her surprise when my response note made it clear I \*did\* live on the same street. I usually parked on a perpendicular street because it was less of a walk for me. Insane that someone would think zone parking is anything but a free for all, even more insane that they'd use their neighbours as an excuse for what was clearly a possessiveness of "their" parking spot.
That’s crazy because PPO streets are only available to residents and businesses within a given limited area.
Right? Lol. Takes some special entitlement to leave a passive aggressive note next to the same permit you have on your own car
To get on street parking in that area of the beach you usually have to get a parking permit because a lot of those houses don't actually have parking access on their property. They are more snug lots and don't often have driveways or garages so most people actually get permanent permits park to park on the street. I know people who have had to get permits for spots a 15 minute walk away from their home because there were no available spots closer. So while there may be occasional houses that do have driveway access or other commercial buildings that have parking spots available it seems no one is selling any for this daycare for this purpose.
There's virtually no parking spaces in the area to be sold The daycare claims nobody is selling them non existent spots because the neighbors don't want them there. They had parking and they removed it to expand the centre Yup, it's the neighbours fault...
Yeah, the daycare made a big mistake, nor arguing that, but I'm just trying to clarify that it's not as simple as "park up the street" in this area.
There’s always street parking available around there during the day
Definitely seems like the daycare centres issue. Seems like they chose to lease/purchase a property that was unfit to serve their needs.
Any good business would have known this would be an issue. They chose to make it someone else's problem.
Kinda wild that a neighborhood where every house is max 10 minutes from a streetcar stop would allow permanent resident street parking.
People simply aren't going to buy $1.5m+ houses if they can't own a car. Not that complicated.
One has nothing to do with the other though. You can more info here: https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation/applying-for-a-parking-permit/residential-on-street-parking/
It’s typically by permit only. Some houses have driveways, others don’t. There’s always competition for spots and people who believe they’re entitled to specific spots near their homes.
They probably shouldn't have gotten rid of their parking then
Maybe [this](https://newatlas.com/urban-arrow-electric-cargo-bicycle/23867/) instead of a giant suv to pick up the kids?
It's not though, I park on Nursewood all the time, at least once a week in the mornings when I drive out there to take my dog to the beach. I've never had any difficulty whatsoever finding a spot.
It's actually kind of a subtext of the article, they could park on nearby streets but there is an element of the local residents who think they own the street parking spot in front of their house going on as well. There's no legal reason they can't park in an open spot on Kingswood for example, the daycare is asking them not to because of the local residents.
If you read the article, you’d see that apparently the residents on adjacent side streets have decided that they get to say who parks there.
If you read the article you'd see that in the Beaches, homeowners need to apply and pay for street parking permits. Most of the homes on that street do not have parking pads or driveways. If they sell their spot to the daycare, where will they park. It is not a tenable solution. .
Sorry, but that's just false. All of the local streets in that area are no parking from 12am-7am except by permit. Local residents can pay for a permit that allows them to park there between 12am and 7am. The rest of the time, anyone can park on those streets.
If you read the article, the neighbours are NIMBYs and won’t let them park on side streets nearby.
Street parking there is no different than anywhere else in the city - street spots don’t belong to anyone. All the permit lets you do is park overnight and not get ticketed.
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What’s the point of driving if they still have to walk 5-10 mins and pay $4 just to do so? Parking in Toronto is out of control and I’m shocked at the comments on this post. Also drop the entitlement nonsense. Being a parent is a full time job and whether you agree with it, who cares. The facf of the matter is they are the next generation and parents have the responsibility of ensuring they are active & productive members of society- for everyone’s benefit.
The residents on the adjoining streets have voted down designated pick up/drop off and Bradford^2 doesn’t want to torpedo a future mayoral campaign over a fucking daycare
> “Basically the meeting went really poorly… The neighbours were just like super opposed to any type of change,” she told CP24.com. > “They had actually said that they would have preferred if the daycare was never built. LMAO. The NIMBYs who are too entitled to follow rules got outfoxed by the more powerful NIMBYs.
This is such classic Beach behaviour. I live in the Beach and it irritates me to no end that people here are so conservative about any kind of change that they’ve NIMBY’d it into irrelevance. Opposition to any kind of density or transit improvements is so intense that we’ve created a transit desert car gridlock hellzone that is no longer the draw it used to be.
I grew up in the Beaches, and while you're not wrong about it being a very NIMBY area, there have been a lot of mid-rise condos built there in the last 10 years - far more than in the 20+ years prior, and all of Queen St E has roadside patios throughout the Summer.
> there have been a lot of mid-rise condos built there in the last 10 years Very few of these have been in the Beaches. More like the Upper Beaches. Regardless, residents opposed any them every step of the way.
NIMBYs fighting NIMBYs, now there's a pay per view we could all enjoy, and just think of the money the city could make
Zoning ordinance on a pole match? Loser leaves town match? Queen Street Fight?
That's not what's happening. It is an absolute mess when all the parents decide to start picking their kids up between 4:30 and 6pm. It is also quite dangerous...I've seen it myself where a parent will dart across the street with two kids dodging cars. The business owners did not think this through at all.
You’d think Brad Bradford would at least consider the value of an added crosswalk then? Why not?
A simple crosswalk would make it a lot safer.
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Wow you want parents to *inconvenience themselves* and *walk a block away* with their *children*?! /s
Brad listening to constituents? Lol
I used to live there and a crosswalk wouldn't necessarily solve the problem either. I have seen parents park their cars blocking the curb cut on the sidewalk, and more than once was nearly clipped by someone running the stop sign and not looking around the corner they were turning. There is plenty of non-permit parking within a few blocks. People can hop out, walk a block or two, and walk back. The solution here is for people in general to stop being so precious about needing parking right in front of the business they are going to.
Which streets specifically have this abundance of parking within a few blocks of Lullaboo?
Brad Bradford doesn’t consider anything related to what his constituents need.
All Brad Bradford does is complain about Olivia Chow when you meet him, even when the issue is completely unrelated. He has no interest in coming up with real solutions to the area when there is problems.
There is a cross walk a block away :/ and plenty of parking on the side streets
Hahahaha LEAGUE OF NIMBYS
imagine being a fucking NIMBY in a city
>Everyone's been ticketed Good.
Oh no not tickets
Entitled idiots. This is one of the most walkable neighbourhoods in the city. > She noted that there is also no crosswalk in the area for parents to cross Queen Street safely. Except for the one 1 block west at Silver Birch, OH, and the one 2 blocks east at Neville Park. Both of which are also at Streetcar stops. There is also parking on any of the side streets both north and south of Queen, and the Valumart at Silver Birch has a lot. The world does not revolve around you. You can not park your 7 seater 2 ton SUV at the front door blocking the streetcar and rush hour traffic just because you're too fucking entitled to walk 30m.
The walkability of the neighbourhood is irrelevant to most of the parents dropping their kids off because they don't live in the area. Competition for daycare spots if fierce, and Lullaboo is a great daycare. The neighbourhood is full of old and retired folks who raised *their* families there, but now there's just not many families with kids in walking distance. There *is not* parking on the north or south side of Queen there. That's the entire problem. There's some green P parking that becomes available at 9AM, but before that is not legal parking because it's a rush hour zone. That's where these parents getting tickets are parking. That valumart lot is for valumart patrons, and I suspect you haven't walked a pair of daycare age kids that distance without a stroller? The prospect of doing it daily during your commute turns a 5 minute drop off into something much longer and stressful.
You CAN park on Willow, Silver Birch, Scarborough, Munroe Park, Kingswood, AND Neville. You are allowed to park on the south side of Queen in the AM starting at 7am until 4pm, and parking is allowed from 9am until Midnight on the north side of Queen (pay required 9am-6pm) so quit your bullshit. The valumart doesn't have gate arms or parking validation, so the ~10 minutes to get the kids isn't a big deal and would likely go unnoticed. >The prospect of doing it daily during your commute turns a 5 minute drop off into something much longer and stressful. And there it is, entitled "I have to block everyone else because MY KIDS are a burden on me". You made the choice to have kids. You are making the choice to put them in daycare to go off and work a job. Why should you be allowed to break the law and delay 100s of people because it's inconvenient to walk your spawn 50m from a side street.
The competition for spots is a valid issue, but that's for the parents to deal with - I do have empathy for them. At the same time, the City is required to follow policy, laws and regulations. I also have empathy for the enforcement officers that must be real sick of dealing with the same problem over and over again. I agree that the walkable nature of the neighborhood is not relevant in a practical sense for the people in the article, at least not immediately. Perhaps encouraging walking drop-offs is something for the daycare to consider further. I also wonder if, perhaps, the daycare expanded without considering this and could scale down a bit to accommodate a drop-off spot on their property, perhaps in exchange for some accommodation from the City. That could help resolve both concerns until a more comprehensive solution is available. Bickering really isn't going to do much and the parties seem to have the same desire for safety - Coun. Bradford might be wise to attempt some form of mediation beyond a community meeting.
It is an issue that the daycare and city are at fault for. However, daycare spots are in dire need in this city and the expansion was extremely needed. The centre has nearly 300 spots and there is a 2.5 year waitlist currently. The ministry also dictates how much outdoor space (to the square foot per child) is needed. So, they cannot just downsize.
That makes sense. I hope they can work something out.
If they created pickup/drop off spots the parents would either form a line and block traffic or just continue to park illegally.
What if they assigned pickup times in a staggered fashion by groups based on when parents can get there? Group A pickup 4:30pm, B 4:45pm, C 5pm, D 5:15 etc Then at least you only have partial mayhem. Also some kind of street allowance for pickup between specific times, only between posted signs wouldn’t absolutely break the flow of traffic (people learn their commuting route and generally adapt - see: city wide construction).
I live very close to this daycare. A few points. 1) They had ample parking for the daycare and removed it to accommodate more kids. I understand this decision/their motivation. 2) The spots that they wanted to use for drop off parking are actually primarily occupied by renters in a building just across the street from the daycare on Kingswood. I have a driveway. I don't personally give a shit about those spots. Most houses on Kingswood have ample drive ways so I suspect the majority complaining about those spots were in fact renters. I understand their POV. It would suck to have to move my car in the morning because your daycare wanted more spots. 3) I've actually found the daycare pretty accommodating. I contacted them about the floodlights at night/weekend and to their credit they turned them off. I would consider my relationship with the owners of the daycare amicable. Neutral at worst. 4) re: noise. I personally don't give a shit and am impacted more than most. 5) My driveway gets blocked all the time but most are courteous enough to have someone in the car/move when I request them to do so. If I don't need my car I don't generally care. All in all this is a very difficult situation. As a parent myself I understand how hard it is to find parking for daycare dropoffs. On the other hand the daycare eliminated ~6 parking spots in an expansion of the grounds and then wanted people on the street to agree to move their cars early in the morning to accommodate their business. I find that a pretty unreasonable ask; even though it does not impact me personally. I am not sure what the solve is.
A lot of the comments here are saying how the parents are so lazy/unreasonable but as a parent who deals with the chaotic morning routine/drop off every day, like I get it. It is a problem. I also don't know what the solution should be but I empathize with the parents. If my kids went to this daycare, I think I would just have to find a new one. Seems this daycare can only accommodate families who live within walking distance.
I also empathize with the parents. I have 3 kids/have gone through the "fun" of drop offs. This is frankly a problem at EVERY daycare I know of. This one is just a bit more extreme than others because Queen is a shit show and dangerous Another issue is the rage baiting in the article. I suspect by >On any given morning, Lapensee said it would not be unusual to see some residents standing on their lawns, telling parents where they can and can’t park. They're talking about people who park in between two driveways (not actually a spot and inconveniences both houses) for instance. It's also not always clear that some driveways are driveways. Also stuff like... > “We were happy to pay for spots and work with the neighbours, but neighbours just told us to close and move to another property,” Guirguis added. Doesn't really make a lot of sense. I don't want their money-- I want my parking spot/driveway. I suspect the renters who don't have driveways would prefer a parking spot to the Daycares' money too. I think the only semi-realistic solution is some exception on Queen. As others have noted people will abuse this and it'll be a shit show, but it already is and I don't see any other solve personally. The good news is that Westbound in the morning is busy but this spot is so far East that it could be worse.
This is a smart idea re: Queen. This is the beginning of Queen street, and the ‘rush hour’ traffic is minor that far east. Most of that section of Queen directly in front of Lullaboo should be 5 min drop off. Sounds like that would be Bradfords job, but he’s useless.
There's no rush hour of car traffic in the morning at all to speak of along that section. If they just removed the "rush hour" prohibition on parking along the stretch from Kingswood to Scarborough road, and made that a designated drop zone from 7AM to 9AM, and 4PM to 6PM, it would be fine. No rush hour impact at all.
I'm a parent of 2 toddlers going to daycare and I don't see the issue. There's no parking in front of ours. All of the side streets are packed. I just drive around until I find a spot and walk over. Problem solved.
This was painful to read lol
The daycare around the corner from our place and the one in close proximity of my yoga studio are both RIDICULOUS during drop off/pick up time. I have almost been run over by parents panicking that they won’t get a “spot” or legit just park in the middle of a one way street blocking everyone and anyone - oh but it’s “just for 2 minutes!!!”. Easy job for the parking officers to get their quota.
We should be thanking these parents for their contributions to the municipal budget
>“Parents are left with no other choice because there's no parking," she said. “Parents are left with no other CONVENIENT choice because there's no parking UNLESS THEY WALK A FEW METERS," I tried to fix that for her.
Exactly! Convenient choice. I resent that they are trying to drum up sympathy for this issue. I also like how she states at the end "it's only 5 minutes" ...it's never 5 minutes it's closer to 15 minutes.
All people live in their own bubble where their "issues or problems" seem absolutely the most important thing that needs to be dealt with. But some are also so deluded into believing that their "inconvenience" is a problem that the rest of us should help them solve.
Exactly
Just park illegally on Queen Street or any adjacent street to ease the congestion.
"I'd rather be fined than walk" mentality. Talk about first world problems...
"The few parking spots that were available at the back of the property were repurposed to create a larger outdoor play area when the facility was expanded." I guess they shouldn't have expanded without a better plan for parking.
Parents act so entitled, just park a couple blocks away and walk. Unless you or your kid is disabled, I think the obvious solution of walking works.
The NIMBYs arguing with the young millennials with young kids is a boxing match I will pay big dollars to see
NIMBY boomer versus Yuppie millennial
Try walking.
Shit — the daycare offered to work with the neighbours and the response was “shut down or move”. That’s REAL helpful.
It’s ultimately a problem with lack of more quality daycares and with transit. My kid’s daycare has kids coming from far out of the neighbourhood and there’s little choice but for them to be driven sometimes. If we had more daycares in more neighbourhoods, and other better transportation options - like better/more prevalent public transit, or protected bike lanes and spaces for child-carrying bicycles/trailers/cargo bikes, this would be less of an issue.
Thanks for this reasonable take, our current daycare is a 30 minute transit ride which can vary wildly if I can even get ON the streetcar as it is. Less than half the infants in our daycare live in the local community. The rest of us have to TTC or drive in.
Yep - and I bet if you’ve got a stroller or even without it adds to the difficulty! I count myself very lucky that we are walking distance to ours. When my kid starts at elementary school, it’s a longer walk to the point that we might end up driving sometimes, but there’s no bus routes near so the options are limited.
We finally got into a closer one for the fall and I'm thanking my lucky stars. 🙏
The problem is we’ll ultimately come up to a shortage of early childhood educators even if all the facilities we wanted and hypothetical spots popped up tomorrow because it’s all but impossible to make a comfortable living as one in the GTA unless you have stayed in the same apartment for decades or live in a multigenerational home.
Yep - it takes planning. They need to have higher pay and work to recruit more people into the field.
Im going to throw an idea out to these parents as a parent myself who doesn't own a car and needs to drop two kids under 5 to daycare everyday... Have you considered walking or biking your kids to daycare? No no no, that's silly. Nevermind
Do they make pedal assist powered Mercedes SUVS? Because the demographic in the area is either all MAMIL or all Wankpanzer.
I mean, sure if you live close enough to the daycare. But with all the competition around daycares, I think a lot of these families are not within walking distance. And personally, I just don't trust myself biking with a baby in tow on city streets. This is a real problem and I don't know what the solution should be. I would probably just try to find a different daycare.
Exactly...I told this to one parent and with child in arm, he told me to shut the f@#& up and mind my own business. So many of these parents are just self entitled assholes.
The Catholic school near my place is always a free for all - parking wherever, double parking, parents darting out between cars into traffic, sometimes dragging their kids. It's amazing no one has been hit yet.
I live on this street. It's one way south of Queen E. The daycare is on the west corner and a primary school a few houses down is on the east side. Cars waiting to pick up kids park on both sides of the street. Rear left passenger doors open while parents put the kids in the car seat while bending over with their bums sticking out. Dangerous. It starts at 3 pm until 6 pm. Yes. It's a safety issue as well as it is illegal.
When NIMBYs end up in someone else’s backyard.
Do any other scofflaws other than drivers ever get sympathetic articles written about them? I wonder if CP24 raking in $$ from auto advertising has anything to do with it.
this is kind of funny due to Cafe TO. Queen street is 4 lanes here with 2 outside lanes for parking. During the morning commute the 2 lanes into downtown have to be free to allow for better commuting between 7-9. And the two lanes going away from downtown have to be free from 4-6 for the same reason. The Biggest farce is Cafe TO makes this all useless. If each block has one patio on the street then you erase all value of not allowing parking on the street. So I kind of understand these parents frustration of not being able to park for 1 minute to get their kid out and to the door as the street cafes make the entire purpose for preventing parking effectivity void. The really odd thing is that this is one of the single most walkable areas in Toronto, with plenty of bike paths, wide sidewalks and its own downtown. We almost never need a vehicle to do anything here as everything is within a couple of kms's and easily walk or bike-able. I'm guessing the people doing drop off don't live in the neighborhood is one of the biggest issues here.
I just saw an SUV parked at a bus stop. Two women were helping a senior citizen out of his wheelchair into the SUV. Cafe TO swallowed up most of the parking. Dundas W @ Keele is now a conga line while Cafe TO is allowed
lol the homeowners on Kingswood shouldn’t get a vote on creating a drop-off area on their street. I’m so tired of NIMBY’s whining that sidewalks, cross walks, stop signs, and parking rules “ruin the feel of the neighborhood”. Just fuck off. Seriously harassing parents for parking on “their” street. Safety should trump NIMBY’s
As someone who doesn't drive it blows my mind how disabled people feel without their right to use their car in any instance possible. Maybe people should car pool, bike, walk or just park further away?
Thanks for saying this, from someone who is disabled. Unfortunately we are thought of last if at all.
Drivers with accessibility permits are permitted to park in No Parking zones and without a designated on-street parking permit
> Drivers with accessibility permits are permitted to park in No Parking zones Not between 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m, when you would be picking up or dropping off someone from a daycare. [Source](https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation/sidewalk-tours-wayfinding/accessible-streets/accessible-parking-permits/) Also this is hilarious: No overnight parking between the hours of 2:00 a.m. – 6:00 a.m., from December 1 to March 31 in the former area of North York only
So, the city needs to fix this "problem" because the people that enrolled their kids into this private daycare didn't bother to consider the parking situation beforehand? This is like people that buy electric cars first and then worry about where they're going to charge it.
Profit over people Did the daycare owners plan for a drop- off zone before opening up the facility? Will they plan for any when they develop the building 2 doors to the west? Or just let neighbours/parents blame each other as they've done to-date? Why does the Ministry of Education Child Care Services standards not include parent child safety at pickup and drop off? They're responsible for the permits for expansion. Why does city zoning not exchange the queen street metered spots for a 10 min drop-off zone? Loss revenue for parking can be recovered thru higher property taxes to the daycare who benefits and profits from this upgrade. The single short notice meeting should have been productive with everyone asking the city for these changes. Instead the daycare owners stated to a room full of angry parents that the few local residents stopped the parking request. This is bs. No resident said "no daycare here" but the owner did say "would you be happier if we weren't here!". The jeering that resulted washed out any meaningful discussion and assumptions were made. The parents were primed to attack by daycare's letters. The local residents were ambushed. The daycare owner agreed to pay for a traffic study, did that happen? Who is the villain? Note, some parents started to realize that this safety issue was created by the daycare not planning for safe arrival and departure. It was a decision to put the problem out there for someone else to solve, and solve for free to the daycare budget. Parents, We're all neighbours and parents who've experienced daycare pains and costs. We've been divided by someone who will bill you monthly and each time you're late at pickup. Who didn't bother to consider your safety when outside their doors. Who continues to blame those neighbors you say hello to as you pass by. Who will expand their business and pass the cost to you in more parking tickets. When do we start asking them to contribute back to the community by paying for your parking tickets and setting up a drop off zone on queen street in front of their commercial buildings? This article's author didn't bother to ask local residents their views, confirm the meeting discussion/mood or consult the Ministry or City Zoning responsible parties. One mislead parent gets the podium. There has not been a second meeting with all impacted parties. Balanced reporting takes time. Do better.
What a bunch of crybabies! Parking in a no stopping zone and then contacting the politicians and the media when you get a ticket for it. Theres multiple different side streets they could park on, but no, they're gonna illegally park 10 metres from the entrance and complain when they get punished
First they decide 150$ is the amount they're willing to risk for parking illegally, and now they're pissed that they're getting caught and have to pay it. >On any given morning, Lapensee said it would not be unusual to see some residents standing on their lawns, telling parents where they can and can’t park. >“The neighbours have been complaining incessantly about this,” she said. I want to live in a rich person's head for a day. Mind-boggling.
Good. There’s a daycare at the end of my street. The kids are fine but their fucknugget ignorant parents are entitled pricks Ticket them poor
My article summary: “Why can't there be an exception [for me]?”
I lost all respect for daycare parents after watching at a different location one pull her Armada diagonally in front of other already double parked parents fully blocking a road and ignoring the about 10’car horn going off as she slowly loaded her kid into the thing while blocking a 2 lane road to/from a busy grocery store… with parking spaces reserved literally across said street that were empty. Last straw for me, never was that inconsiderate…my kids walked or got strollered from parking.
You'd think having a daycare right on a major transit line would mean the parents take the TTC.
At the *end* of the most screwed up line in the city. You'd have to get to the Queen line somewhere west of the daycare (useless if you live east of it), and then double back. And the queen line is absolute shit right now due to Ontario line construction.
They're probably coming straight from work
[удалено]
2316 Queen St East at Kingswood is more than a 4 Minute walk from Lawrence. There is no parking lot there. Don’t know what you are looking at.
There’s a long-ass quiet road RIGHT BESIDE IT where you could pull over and walk the kiddos. But no.
This is not a city problem. This a people need to adjust behavior problem.
Unfortunately parking around schools and childcare centres is a complete gong show and it has been for a long time. I don’t know the solution to the overall problem but not being willing to come together and come up with solutions together is ridiculous.
Good
I wish parking enforcement would do this to AMG public school on Dufferin....everyone day Dufferin is completely bottlenecked b/c of parents, theres plenty of parking in the neighborhood but God forbid having to walk five minutes to pick your kid up.
East end is awful for this. I find West end parents walk or bike with their kids almost everywhere.
That’s partially because the west has more protected cycling infrastructure
Brad Bradford: > “Over my time in office, I’ve been firm in my belief that local residents should decide what to do about parking on their street.” It's not *their* street, it belongs to all of us. Having a place where people can unload kids for daycare parking is a public good, and Bradford is abdicating his responsibilities in a politically expedient way by giving local residents a veto on it. For that matter, so is the rest of City Council if they let him. (Loading and unloading on Queen St in a rush hour no-stopping zone is also not tenable.)
This is nothing. Check out Alexandra Park daycare ([street view](https://maps.app.goo.gl/xHxnynVs86Lk9Eqb8?g_st=ac)) where there's a dedicated pickup/drop-off section that allows for for 10 minute parking, except it's almost always taken up by asshole residents with handicap permits who can't be bothered to park across the one-lane street.
This kind of stuff drives me crazy, they literally create exactly what they are supposed to do, a 10 minute drop off, and OTHER people abuse it.
Usually though people are there up to 30 minutes early to get a spot.
Is it Karen's god given right to park wherever she wants so Freyathan doesn't have to walk a block to daycare? What entitled trash.
Beaches Karen's at it again lol
This article captures the Beaches sentiment entirely. The entitlement, the NIMBYism. Everybody is in the wrong here except the poor daycare.
Daycare caused this!
“On any given morning, Lapensee said it would not be unusual to see some residents standing on their lawns, telling parents where they can and can’t park.” People in the beaches are so awful it’s laughable. God forbid someone park for 10 minutes in front of your house to drop off a child.
On the other hand, my street has incredibly limited parking because it's always half under construction, but all the school bus drivers feel entitled to take up two or three spots instead of parking at the school, where the teachers' lot is half-empty because the teachers use the TTC. But to get back on topic... the Beaches have world-class NIMBY arguments. Also, one of my friends over there just got a nasty note from the school because she lets her 10yo walk by themselves a whopping 3 blocks to the school instead of participating in the SUV rodeo like !?!?
I’m from Ottawa. Looking at street view, I find it odd to see som many small buildings in a road covered by street cars. Isn’t this a major transit route? I would expect taller buildings.
historical buildings
What’s historical about the daycare’s building?
i dunno that's just my guess that a lot of streets downtown still have their old small buildings instead of having them all knocked down to build big high-rises. there's usually also rules like you can't build a new building that's taller than the current tallest building on the street or it can only be X amount taller than the current tallest building on the street. that's probably another explanation for why the buildings there are so stumpy.
This is the Toronto reality. City council wants the city to be carless. All new developments have NO minimums for parking. Even in suburbs like Toronto. These issues are only going to get worse over time. The reality is people drive in the city and the planners want us all to bike our kids to daycare…
how bout using the valumart parking lot literally a block and a half away from the daycare?
That would be parking illegally on private property as opposed to city property....not much of a solution. In fact, it isn't a solution.
Beaches gonna beach. News at 11.
I don't know who is going to win this dispute but it might leave a small crater behind on Queen Street, like Thor battling the Hulk
The parking situation at the school and daycare on my street in the west end is out of control. Since when is it okay to park your suv on the sidewalk forcing pedestrians into the street? The entitlement is unbelievable - I can’t help think of them as children dropping off their kids… I drive and have a kid, but that doesn’t give me any special privileges as far as I know.
Boo hoo. Why is it always 30 and 40-something parents in this city that complain the most about how hard their lives are, when they are often the most privileged people?
Welcome to my entitled neighbourhood. I get it; you're rushing to get out the door and on your way to work....you've got your child's daycare right on your route and you're just going to pop in for a minute, right? Well, multiply your minute by countless other parents. It's not any different on some of the side streets close to schools (St. Denis for example)...let's all clog up Spruce Hill and Balsam Avenue because you cannot possibly walk your kids to school. Y'all need to understand that the rules apply to everyone....kids or no kids. (By the way, I walked my kid to school and picked her up every day....no matter the weather or my working schedule, until she was old enough to walk the route herself).
Everyone seriously needs to go for a 5-10 minute walk at the beginning of every day, that way, walking a block or two when it’s the obvious solution to one’s problem doesn’t seem so out of reach.