The Toronto Parking Authority, commonly known as Green P for its green-colour branding, is a parking lot management company owned by the City of Toronto. The TPA was established in 1998 with the merger of parking operations in the cities of the former Metropolitan Toronto. A municipal parking authority in the former city of Toronto was first set up in 1952, taking over management of parking from the police. TPA is an important part of the City's economic engine, having managed more than 35,000,000 client transactions in its various facilities, simplifying customer transaction by offering mobile payment through its Green P app available on the Apple Store and Google Play store. The TPA operates off-street parking garages & parking lots, on-street metered parking, and Toronto's bicycle sharing system, Bike Share Toronto. It is one of the largest operators of municipal parking services in North America, and is 100% self-sustaining through parking user fees and other sources, returning 75% of its annual net operating income to the City of Toronto, totaling $1.5 billion dollars since 1992.
Operations
The TPA operates around 59,000 parking spaces broken into 3 categories, in off-street parking garages & parking lots, on-street metered parking and joint ventured managed lots across Toronto. 21,000 of these spaces are located over 300 off street parking garages and lots, with the largest parking garage being the 2,027 space underground parking garage under Nathan Phillips Square. Parking lots that are operated by the Toronto Parking Authority are marked with green signs with their signature P in the middle, hence, "Green P" parking. The TPA also manages and operates parking facilities under contract for the Toronto Transit Commission, with around 13,000 spaces located at 17 TTC stations across the city, including at new stations on the Toronto York Spadina Subway Extension. The largest TTC parking lot is the combined parking lot for Finch Station, with over 3,200 spaces. The TPA also operates and maintains Toronto's bicycle sharing system, Bike Share Toronto. The TPA took over from Public Bike System Company in 2013 when they ran into financial difficulties. Since then, ridership has grown exponentially reaching 8 million rides, now covering 200 squared Km of the Greater Toronto Area with 6,850 bikes at 625 stations and 12,000 docking points.
Enforcement
Enforcement of parking in TPA's lots are carried out by TPA's own enforcement officers. Customers who fail to pay or park longer for the amount of time that they purchase are issued a parking ticket requesting payment and issued official police tags for each subsequent offence.
