Throughout the "Greater Downtown" series I've been publishing here for the past two months, I've tried to examine the city center as a whole system, with a specific vision for its future. I've explored best practices in other successful communities, the pedestrian environment and walkability, public transit, the sorry state of the sidewalks, access and circulation, the farmer's markets, vacancy issues, a whimsical suggestion of a downtown "How long has THAT been there?"
ballpark, and some of the local heroes who help to make downtown the jewel that it is.
But today we're going to talk about the single most critical factor in sustaining the progress we've made in recent years, and realizing a vision of a city center that is vital, dynamic, and successful for all stakeholders. Yes, my friends, we're going to talk about parking.
I know some of you are already glazing over at the mere mention of temporary automobile storage, and I understand why. It is a subject that has been shrouded almost exclusively in emotionalism. The topic is so polarized that most discussions about it quickly devolve into a rapid exchange of slogans and ad hominems. And I think part of the problem is that the question is nearly always posed as a quantitative analysis. The two "ends" of the debate (if an argument that is at once circular and endless can be said to have ends) can be reduced to "we need more parking" and "we have plenty of parking". Both are true. Both are false. Let's turn this thing around and look at it another way.
As I said in an earlier post, I'm prepared to concede the argument that we have "plenty" of parking, subject to two stipulations; it's in the wrong places, and it's in the wrong hands. Accdording to the results of the now infamous March 2006 charrette, 46% of the over 4000 parking spaces in the total downtown are in private lots. In their analysis of parking supply and demand, the charrette facilitators did not break out the private lots from the municipal lots and on-street parking. This is a flawed analysis, in my judgment, inasmuch as private lots are criminally undersubscribed. Take a walk around the downtown on any busy weekday, and you'll see that most private parking lots are always nearly empty. Bank parking lots, in particular, while serving a fairly high churn rate, nevertheless, are usually only about half-filled at any particular time.
Thus, when the charrette folks analyzed parking demand in the two blocks bounded by 2nd, 3rd, Salem and Main Streets, they calculated 85% occupancy (and thus ideal), notwithstanding that over 25% of the parking in that area is on private lots, and is undersubscribed. The idea that "85% is typically considered the optimal balance between making efficient use of the supply and making it easy to find a space" is based on there being a space or two available on street in each block face. But if 25% of the parking analyzed is in private hands, then the 15% of "available" parking is in fact unavailable, and those open spaces on street are largely mythical.
The charrette analysis goes on to claim that occupancy in "Sub Area 1" (bounded by 1st, 3rd, Salem and Flume streets) is only 71%, but again, fails to take into account that 25% of the spaces in that district are in private hands, so the actual availability of on-street parking spaces is significantly lower than 29%, as anyone who's tried to find a convenient on-street parking during the day will attest.
It has been argued that if people were willing to walk "a few blocks" they could find plenty of open spaces, which may be true, but that's irrelevant. I am not arguing that patrons can't find parking, but that the current parking supply is not suited to the very large number of employees and business owners that must park for extended periods of time.
Again, the whole discussion bogs down on the false analysis of quantity. Quantity is not the problem. 4000 parking spaces probably is a sufficient number of spaces. The problem is in the market model, and in the pricing.
Some private spaces are not available at any price. Unless you have business with the bank, you cannot park in their lots. And in recent years, most banking services are delivered online, so the demand for parking at the bricks-and-mortar bank branches is significantly reduced. Their lots are more than half-empty all day, radiating heat, and offering bleak streetscapes to adjacent pedestrians.
Other privately operated lots offer leased spaces (as does the city on its municipal lots) to individuals' exclusive use. This is terribly inefficient, inasmuch as even those who use their spaces all day every weekday leave them empty on evenings and weekends. As we've seen, the demand for parking is acute at those times, as well.
At symposium on innovative parking strategies held July 25 in Sacrmaneto, three key reforms were identified by several presenters. They are:
These recommendations, among others, were included in the charrette results, and city staff were directed by the city council to develop naplan to implement these strategies. One important recommendation was to extend parking meter enforcement on evenings and weekends. On Tuesday, the Internal Affairs committee will entertain discussion of this recommendation.
I very much favor meter enforcement extension, subject to some stipulations. The first being that resulting revenues be specifically earmarked for improving parking availability in the downtown. Again, I'm not talking about quantity of parking spaces, but rather the quality of parking in the central core. I think that since every parked car represents an ambulatory pedestrian, some of this revenue could be used to improve the pedestrian evironment and walkability of the city center. And some of this revenue might be well invested in better wayfinding signage and other mechanisms to direct motorists to available parking. But the bulk of this revenue should be utilized to increase the availability of parking, through effective management strategies, recovery of private parking space for public use, and to invest in technologies to improve parking payment and collection.
For example, there are "pay stations" in use in other ciommunities that allow payment with credit and debit cards, and even new technologies that enable people to pay with their cell phones. No need to travel with a bag of quarters. Programmable meters that make it possible to implement variable pricing based on demand are an effective mechanism to encourage long-term parking in low-demand areas, freeing up spaces in high-demand corridors for patrons.
There is a counterargument that requiring evening and weekend patrons to pay for their parking will hurt businesses downtown. This is a fallacy, as numerous successful downtown revitalization efforts from San Diego to Seattle will attest. Restaurateurs, in particular, are concerned that patrons being required to jump up from the table to feed a meter or risk a $15 ticket will lose them customers. In fact, extending enforcement into their prime time will not hurt their business, it will hurt Outback's, Logan's, Chili's, and Olive Garden's.
Parking in the downtown between 6 and 10 PM is just as dense as during the day. And for the same reason; employees and business owners are using those close-in spaces, such that potential customers searching for parking become discouraged and go out to the pattern restaurants around town with acres of available parking. By enforcing meters in the evening, with variable demand-based pricing, some number of employees will park further out, freeing up those spaces for patrons.
Patrons who are facing the prospect of spending $50+ per seat for a fine dining experience don't mind paying a buck or two for parking. What they mind is not finding parking convenient to their destination. Extended meter enforcement helps to solve that problem, increasing business.
About Me: From commentary on local politics to critiques of art and culture to random philosophical musings, my occasional observations are a Dog's Breakfast of media criticism that is sometimes surprising, sometimes unappetizing, but always colorful.
But Alan, all you talk about is reality. Perception is far more powerful. There may or may not be enough parking spaces available now, but without a significant new parking garage or lot, the perception will remain that you can never find a space in downtown. We need a "big" solution to the problem, not a bunch of little reshuffles.
Alan
Alan--
Thanks again for your comments (and congratulations on your new location, by the way. Now I can get on with demolishing that building on Third Street...)
Seriously, though, I agree that perception is powerful, but I think it is possible to change that perception by shifting demand patterns through differential market pricing.
As I've pointed out in other postings, I think we need to recover a lot of the private parking in downtown and convert it to pedestrian uses, and I believe we'll need to replace that capacity with new public parking infrastructure before we can do that, so I'm not giving up on a new parking structure in the very near future. But I don't think it will be the shot-in-the-arm that downtown merchants need in terms of driving more patrons into the area. We need immediate near-term relief, and these tactics I've been receommending have the advantage of having worked very effectively in other communities facing similar challenges. Smart people learn from their mistakes. Wise people learn from other people's mistakes.