Downtown parking: Get off the street and make room for the customers
Grand Forks' consultants are back and they have a message: Get off the street and make room for the customers. That's what I took away from that downtown parking open house today, which, by the way, was attended by four people, two of them reporters.
The consultants, a couple of nice fellas from ND LEA's Winnipeg office, figured the big problem with downtown is that the allocation of parking spaces is all wrong. The major concentration of parking, parking ramps and big public parking lots, isn't near the places people want to go. Most of drivers use on-street parking and avoid the ramps and lots. Hence the perception of parking shortage when, in fact, there is a surplus.
The way to fix this, according to consultant Richard Tebinka, is to get all the people that have to be downtown anyway -- that would be high school students, downtown residents and workers, like me -- into the ramps and lots so there's more on-street parking for the people that don't have to be there -- that would be customers of downtown businesses.
(I was going to tell you how pissed off that makes me feel, but remembered not to get too opinionated. It should be mentioned that many people that live and/or work downtown are the customers, too. I've got enough of those "frequent flyer" cards from Urban for half a dozen T-shirts [10 cards for a free shirt] to prove it.)
There's various ways of doing this, Tebinka said, such as strictly enforcing the time limit on on-street parking, meaning more parking tickets, and upgrading security in the parking ramps.
He said that the ramps are statistically safer than many people believe. Police report that the Central High School ramp, the most dangerous one in many people's minds, gets an incident of criminal mischief only once every two months. (He conceded that minor vandalism might go unreported.)
This seems to imply that the ramps are safe, except there weren't any statistics on incidents of criminal mischief for on-street parking. Since we're talking about parking for workers, there should be a break out for daytime versus nighttime incidents.
Anyway, the security upgrade Tebinka talked about would include things like better lighting, security cameras and regular visits by uniformed security personnel.
ND LEA's Powerpoint presentation is available here. There's more information about proposed changes to downtown parking, including angled parking and better signage.
The consultants, a couple of nice fellas from ND LEA's Winnipeg office, figured the big problem with downtown is that the allocation of parking spaces is all wrong. The major concentration of parking, parking ramps and big public parking lots, isn't near the places people want to go. Most of drivers use on-street parking and avoid the ramps and lots. Hence the perception of parking shortage when, in fact, there is a surplus.
The way to fix this, according to consultant Richard Tebinka, is to get all the people that have to be downtown anyway -- that would be high school students, downtown residents and workers, like me -- into the ramps and lots so there's more on-street parking for the people that don't have to be there -- that would be customers of downtown businesses.
(I was going to tell you how pissed off that makes me feel, but remembered not to get too opinionated. It should be mentioned that many people that live and/or work downtown are the customers, too. I've got enough of those "frequent flyer" cards from Urban for half a dozen T-shirts [10 cards for a free shirt] to prove it.)
There's various ways of doing this, Tebinka said, such as strictly enforcing the time limit on on-street parking, meaning more parking tickets, and upgrading security in the parking ramps.
He said that the ramps are statistically safer than many people believe. Police report that the Central High School ramp, the most dangerous one in many people's minds, gets an incident of criminal mischief only once every two months. (He conceded that minor vandalism might go unreported.)
This seems to imply that the ramps are safe, except there weren't any statistics on incidents of criminal mischief for on-street parking. Since we're talking about parking for workers, there should be a break out for daytime versus nighttime incidents.
Anyway, the security upgrade Tebinka talked about would include things like better lighting, security cameras and regular visits by uniformed security personnel.
ND LEA's Powerpoint presentation is available here. There's more information about proposed changes to downtown parking, including angled parking and better signage.
posted by Tu-Uyen at 8:44 PM
4 Comments:
Parking kiosks rawk! Stick your debit card in the machine, select how much time you need, and print the ticket. Throw the receipt on your dash and hit the road. The reality is parking is so cheap, you don't miss the money. But, it all adds up for the city. It also forces employees off the street and frees up space for shoppers. The downtown merchants will not like it because their competitors, the mall, strip malls, etc. have free parking.
Dave,
I don't know why but that point never sticks around here. People will drive to the mall and walk 50 yards to and entrance and then walk miles within the mall, but walk outside? Even in good weather? Wouldn't hear of it!
In a perfect world, people might even ride a bike or take public transportation. What a concept!
"In a perfect world, people might even ride a bike..."
Can't ride a bike downtown anymore either. The city council is crying about that already. People are dying every day with collisions between people and bikes. I see it every day. Well maybe not. Also people on bikes have no morals, says one city council member(forget his name).
>I like the city transit system, but I think a private company could run a bus system as well and maybe even cheaper. That's a debate for another day.
I like the bus system, too, but it is a moot point as to whether privatization would be cheaper. We would still have to find other city jobs for those who are currently working for the bus system, so we wouldn't save there. I think private companies save because they pay pretty low wages to the drivers. And that's the kind of service you get, too: low. Ever ride in Fargo? Our service here is so good because the drivers are good...maybe they feel they have more of an investment in the system.
>The downtown merchants will not like it because their competitors, the mall, strip malls, etc. have free parking.
The downtown merchants would welcome anything that collected money and alleviated the need to meet the quarterly parking assessments. Yes, the downtown businesses pay for all your free parking! I'm sure the strip mall retailers pay somehow, as well.
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