Finding Parking in Toronto

Every once in a while I have to drive downtown, and my biggest hassle is usually “where can I park?” Unfortunately, my first impulse is to go to the Green P Parking website, but it turns out that their site is lousy. I’ve never satisfactorily been able to use it to find a parking lot near where I’m going. (It’s been a pet peeve for a while, and I finally sent them a long-winded email with suggestions to improve their site.)

However, just as my blood was getting its hottest, I found a great site: StopFinder. It’s a mashup that uses Google Maps; type in your destination, and even what time you’re going and how long you’ll be staying, and it will give you:

• All of the parking lots in the area—something that the Green P web site cannot do, I can’t stress that enough—with the closest lot highlighted for you
• Prices and hours of service for each of the parking lots
• Colour-coded rankings of the lots’ prices
• Bus and subway stops in the area, with links to the TTC schedule, so that you can figure out when the bus will arrive

It looks like this:Of course, now that I’ve put up a specific destination in that screenshot, knowing my luck they’ll tear down the club that’s currently there, and build some kind of sex club or something, that will last for twenty years. And anyone who comes to this post will be wondering, “why did serna put up a link to a sex club?!?”

So there you have it. If you’re going somewhere in Toronto, and want to know where to park or how to take the TTC there, try StopFinder.