PeteThe recording of last night's Downtown Parking Study presentation just hit YouTube https://youtu.be/kLA5shRujBM
YouTube
The parking study was funded by $25k from the state and began in December, run by a firm called Stantec https://www.stantec.com/en
They look to be a fairly large consultancy based out of Toronto. The website has a lot to say about "community".
Data-gathering ran through April of this year. The idea is to better understand downtown parking utilization, both as it is impacted by multiple project currently underway—the new library, the skate park, the temporary fire station in the Hope St. lot, the Wilson's building redevelopment—and to provide a basis for the Main St. Improvement project coming out of the MA DOT.
The mayor says they get "a lot of complaints" about parking at her office. "Are we making too much money off it? Are we making not enough money off it?" noting that parking revenue is important to the city, w/an aside that claims that other communities that provide free parking may not take into account that those communities have alternative revenue sources.
Stantec says they are providing technical guidance and best practices, and that the work is largely done from their perspective. A bit of a sales pitch about their 20 years' of experience doing parking studies around MA and the rest of the US. Says some of what they learned is unique to Greenfield, but not all of it.
The colored-in areas represent the parking inventory in downtown Greenfield, both private and public. They say our parking regulations are "not overly complex, fairly straightforward." It's over 3000 parking spaces, they say "it's a lot" for a small town, about 80% of it is off-street. The majority of the parking is either private parking or otherwise restricted.
During the data gathering around actual parking usage this spring, the peak period was ~10a on a Thursday morning. Parking utilization downtown at this peak period is only 55%. Worth noting that their definition of "optimal" parking utilization is 80-90%, meaning that you there are a lot of people using parking downtown, but you can still find spots.
Interesting, but makes sense: The on-street parking *feels* most busy at 6pm on a Thursday, but overall utilization is at that time is only 34%. That's when the meters have shut off. Very similar pattern at 10am on Saturday morning. "The system isn't working because nobody is paying anything for parking."
For anyone who has spent time reading or thinking about resource utilization, this will make total sense, but I fear it will be super-confusing and counterintuitive to the public: The problem with our perceived parking congestion problem is that parking is too cheap. We make on-street parking free when it is most in demand, while the parking garage is always the most expensive parking spot in town.
A big take-away here seems to be that parking in the core downtown area (i.e., on-street parking on Main St and the immediate side-street areas) is consistently full, but parking everywhere else in the downtown area is severely underutilized.
Most of the off-street parking is not public parking; it's private lots. They have "For customers only" types of signs, but they sit largely empty. One of the recommendations is for the city to work with the business owners to make these lots publicly available through revenue- or service-sharing.
Zoning-wise, the core downtown district does not require business to provide any parking. However, just outside this immediate core, our zoning does require businesses to build parking, and in quite high numbers. That, presumably, is one of the reasons we end up with so many of these lots sitting mostly empty all the time.
All of the current projects combined—the skate park, the library, the Wilson's redevelopment, the Court Square redevelopment—will reduce overall downtown parking inventory by a total of 33 spaces, 1.1%. There is no reason to replace them, and it seems like we should reduce the inventory even further.
So then it's on to parking pricing… Greenfield has static parking pricing; costs are different around the downtown area, but the pricing is not responsive to demand, e.g., parking on the street is free in the evening when demand is at its highest. They also note that Greenfield's monthly parking permits are *much* less expensive than other cities in the area, although it's a bit questionable how comparable those cities are.
Another big recommendation here is to remove the time limits. If we are concerned about creating parking turnover, responsive pricing is a better way to do that.
Another recommendation they make (in addition to tiered meter pricing based on demand and eliminating the time limit on parking) is to offer tiered pricing on parking permits, e.g., raise the price but provide a monthly permit option. Currently, we only let people buy permits on an annual basis.
Signage and wayfinding… Greenfield has a real hodge-podge of signage about parking around town, probably reflective of the various disconnected efforts have have been made over the years to address the parking situation (perceived or real). They also note that there is no overall parking map available (either online or IRL) where people can see what the parking options are and how they related to points of interest, restaurants, shops, etc.
The bulk of the parking tickets that are written are for the core downtown area on-street parking. OTOH, Greenfield has—comparatively—very low violation amounts. Every fine is $10. Recommendation is to dial back the ticketing, eliminate the time limits, but increase the amount of the fines (start w/a warning, but then step up the fines for repeat violators).
"Everybody who parks is a pedestrian." Poor parking options and difficult connections between parking and destinations make the parking system worse, and they emphasize the need to think about things like crosswalks and medians. Expect these recommendations to feed directly into the Main Street redesign project.
Big take-aways here are that Main Street is too long, too wide, too hard to cross, and has too many parking spot. They estimate 60% of the parking spots on Main St could be eliminated with very little impact.
Question from Tim Dolan about the elimination of on-street dining… their recommendation is to bring it back/keep it. "It's worth so much more than 1 or 2 parking spaces."
Interesting point in a response to a question that seems to sort of be about how downtown businesses are supposed to compete with the free parking at Big Y plaza etc… If people are parking downtown only because it's free, that doesn't really get you much.