County of Brant Council discussed the nature of the planned parking spaces for Grand River Street north in Paris, during its regular meeting on Tuesday, October 28, 2025.
As Paris’ downtown strip undergoes a major overhaul with the Downtown Dig, the previous angled parking on Grand River Street North, between the Nith River bridge and just past William Street, will be replaced with parallel parking.
According to the report submitted by Rick Knap, the County’s Roads Technologist, plans include 20 standard parking spaces with two-hours limits, three 15-minute loading zones for passengers or merchandise, and seven accessible parking spaces. Drawings submitted along with the report show that the standard parking spaces will be 2.5 metres by 6.75 metres in size, while the accessible spaces will be 3 metres by 6.75 metres.
Ward 3 Councillor John Bell said that while the traffic flow and the removal of angled parking have been a contentious topics in the community, he said he believes that Council made the right decision.
“If we’re going to tear up the road to renew and upgrade utilities, then we should change the streetscape to improve accessibility and beautify the downtown as well,” he said. “The end product, I think, is going to be absolutely fantastic and we’re almost through it. I want it to be a success; I don’t want it to be remembered as something of a failure. I want our residents to be delighted by what they see. …I don’t want them focused on the parking style or the parking quantity.”
Bell went on to say that while it may seem to some people that the change in parking style will ultimately lower the amount of spaces in the area, that’s not the case.
“Actually the net effect is, we’re adding 20 to 30 parking spaces on Grand River Street North that we have done without for the last year, and we added 71 spots back where the old OPP station was as well,” he explained.
The councillor then added that since he recently shared images of the downtown on social media, several comments were made concerning the issue of parallel parking, and that he would be advocating for long spaces.
“Social media has introduced me to a new word, ‘parallelophobia.’ And ‘parallelophobia’ is a fear of parallel parking. …From the image that I put on Facebook, the instantaneous reaction was, ‘the road is too small,’ ‘it won’t accommodate two vehicles going up and down,’ and ‘people can’t parallel park, so the minute somebody wants to, the traffic is going to come to a grinding halt,” said Bell. “So, I’m advocating for longer parking spaces, not more; in fact, we’ll have less, but we don’t need more. We’ve got more in the back and we’ve got plenty of parking spaces to satisfy the demands of downtown Paris.”
He then suggested that rather than having the spaces be 6.75 metres long, they should be closer to 8 or 9 metres so that they can better accommodate pickup trucks and so people can drive in and out of them.
“I sincerely believe if we don’t do something like that, we will be continuously hounded by our community and that the positives of what we’re doing on Grand River Street North will be lost in a fog of social media,” said Bell.
In response, David Mellor, the County’s General Manager of Operations, said if they went with that option, the downtown strip could lose up to seven spaces. He also noted that the average length vehicle in Canada is 4.4 metres, and the way the parking spaces have been designed, actually allow for more maneuverability.
“This street is unique in that there’s 2.5 metre rollover curves on either side of the driving lane. So if you imagine, when you’re parking in a typical parking spot, you have a barrier curb that you can’t roll over, but in these spots you can. So there’s a lot more room for maneuverability for people to come in and roll over that curb and then readjust if they’re pulling in, or if they’re parallel parking,” explained Mellor. “…And sure, if you are in a crew-cab, three-quarter-ton-truck, you’re not going to be able to pull in easily, or if both vehicles are on either side, it would be challenging for them to find a spot. But your average user would be able to park with ease downtown.”
Ward 2 Councillor Steve Howes pointed out that while Bell’s statement in regards to social media commentary about parallel parking were valid, if the County took away an additional seven spaces from Grand River Street to accommodate drive-in, drive-out spots, they would still face criticism.
“That comes with the job,” said Howes.
Adam Crozier, the County’s Acting General Manager of Strategic Initiatives, later pointed out that while yes, there may be delays with parallel parking, there were delays with the angled parking too.
“I think what people maybe forget is that there were significant delays when people were trying to back out of angled parking spots, and there were significant delays when you had a three-quarter-ton-truck blocking your view,” he said. “I don’t know how people did it before backup cameras, because you could barely see.”
Crozier added that once everything is in place and people start using the parking, it will give County staff time to evaluate how it’s working before they make any sort of longer-term adjustments.
Bell later officially moved an amendment to the larger report to allow for longer drive-in, drive-out parking spaces, and Ward 2 Councillor Lukas Oakely said he would be in support of it as they could always make the parking spaces smaller in the future if they found that they needed to.
Ward 1 Councillors John MacAlpine and Jennifer Kyle, as well as Ward 4 Councillor’s David Miller and Robert Chambers, said they would not be supporting the amendment.
“I believe that we need every space that we can downtown,” said MacAlpine. “So I think that the current proposed length has been the standard in many communities and well used, I think we should stick with that.”
“If I bring my husband’s truck, I know that I’m not going to be aiming for a tight spot; I’m going to find something a bit bigger, and I might walk a little bit further. But if I’ve got my little Toyota, I’ll park wherever I can put that little thing,” added Kyle. “I don’t think we should be necessarily accommodating extra large spaces and then losing other spaces because of that. I think that folks who drive big vehicles know the drill. [Even at] the grocery store, I’m going to park at the back of the parking lot, I’m not going to try and get in front where there’s going to be a tight squeeze.”
After some more discussion, the vote on the amendment later failed on a tie.
The rest of the report, which featured various parking and traffic modifications throughout the County of Brant, was carried on a vote of 9-1.
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
