233
city carparks whose full rate card we read
470
published maximums that cap what a stay can cost
92
with no weekday daytime maximum, where the meter simply keeps running
44
hours-of-closure rules, when the gate simply does not open
The hourly rate is not your total
Most city carparks post a rate by the half hour. It is the number on the sign, so it is the number people multiply, and for a short visit it is right.
It stops being right at the point the card caps it. 20 Dundas Square charges $4.50 per half hour and posts a $23.00 maximum between 7am and 6pm. Three hours there is not three hours of meter:
20 Dundas Square, arriving 10am, three hours. The meter reaches $27.00 and the posted day maximum stops it at $23.00.
There are 470 maximums like that one across the carparks we read. Multiplying ignores every one of them, and it always errs the same way: upward.
And plenty of carparks have no maximum at all
The section above is the good news. This is the other half of it: a maximum is something a carpark chooses to publish, and 92 of the 233 cards we read carry none that covers a weekday afternoon. There, five hours really is five hours of meter.
Two carparks about a kilometre apart, both on a Tuesday from 1pm, both for five hours. 110 Queen Street West charges $9.00 an hour and caps a weekday day at $24.00:
110 Queen Street West, five hours from 1pm. The meter would reach $45.00; the posted day maximum stops it at $24.00.
105 Spadina Avenue charges $10.50 an hour and publishes a night maximum but no daytime one. The same five hours costs $52.50, and there is no second figure to put beside it, because nothing stops the meter before 6pm.
A dollar fifty an hour separates those two signs. Five hours separates them by $28.50. This is the case worth checking before you leave the car, and it is the one a rate on a sign will never warn you about.
Evening is a different price from afternoon
The same carpark usually carries a second maximum for the night, and it is often less than half the daytime one. 20 Dundas Square drops to $12.00 between 6pm and 7am.
The same three hours at the same carpark, arriving at 7pm instead of 10am.
Nothing about the stay changed except when it started. This is the single largest thing a driver can act on, and it is invisible if you only read the hourly rate.
Saturday is not Sunday
Weekend pricing is usually written as one column, and often it is not. At 20 Dundas Square a Saturday day caps at $25.00 and a Sunday at $16.00, on the same card, for the same hours.
Read as a single weekend rate, whichever line came last would win for both days, and a Saturday stay would be quoted the Sunday price. The two days are kept apart wherever the card keeps them apart.
The first hours can be priced apart from the rest
A maximum caps a stay. This is the opposite: a rate that applies only at the start of one, and it is the trap that costs the most to guess at, because the hourly rate on the sign is correct and still gives you the wrong answer.
323 Richmond Street East charges $3.00 per half hour, so $6.00 an hour. Two hours on a Tuesday is exactly what that implies. Its card also carries a weekend special: the first two hours at $2.00 an hour.
323 Richmond Street East, two hours. The left figure is a Tuesday, the right is the same two hours on a Saturday.
A third of the price, and nothing decided it but the day of the week. The rate on the sign never changed.
Some carparks have no hourly rate to multiply
20 of the 240 carparks publish no half hour figure at all. They charge one flat price for the visit, and most of them are commuter lots at the end of a subway line.
Multiply a rate that does not exist and you get zero, which is how a $6.00 commuter lot ends up looking like the cheapest parking in the city. There are 42 flat rates in the set, and each one is a price rather than a rate.
Sometimes the answer is that it is shut
A card can also say when a carpark does not open. That is not a pricing rule and it cannot be averaged into one: there are 44 of them, and if your window falls inside one, the cheapest price in the neighbourhood is worth nothing to you.
Results that are closed for the hours you searched say so instead of quoting a price you could not use.
If you park every day, ask a different question
142 carparks publish a monthly permit price. A permit is a different product rather than a longer stay: its own price, its own availability, and sometimes a waiting list rather than a space.
Search monthly permits and the list prices the permit rather than the hours.
What this means when you search
Every price on ParkingNova is worked out for the window you asked about, against the card that carpark actually publishes: the maximums, the evening rate, the right weekend column, and the flat rate where there is no meter.
It is arithmetic anyone could do with the card in front of them. The card is just rarely in front of them at the moment it matters.