I wasn’t able to attend the meeting in person, but I rushed to download the video the second I got home last night because I had heard a rumor that some reporter had tried to attack Jane Brunner during the meeting and had to be dragged out in handcuffs or something. Not often you see that kind of excitement in City Council meetings!

I have to confess that I was a tiny bit disappointed when I got to watch the video, since it turned out that I had gotten a somewhat exaggerated account of the event, and the fireworks weren’t quite as dramatic as I had been led to believe. Still, I’m sure that if you were in the room, it would have felt pretty intense.

Other than that, the discussion was…well, for now I’ll just leave it at unsatisfying. I’ll write more later in the week, but for those who just can’t wait, you can view all the video from the Building Services item at yesterday’s meeting here.

In other news, as you may have read on Living in the O yesterday, this is an exciting week for Oaklanders interested in parking issues. Which is everyone, right?

Parking! Workshop on Thursday

If you are on any kind of City email list or neighborhood listserv, you have probably gotten like six thousand copies of this message in the last month:

The City of Oakland is updating its off-street parking regulations. The City’s off-street parking regulations have not been comprehensively updated since 1965 and need to be updated to be consistent with current City policies. This introductory workshop is the first step in the process of updating the City’s off-street parking regulations.

Come and learn about off-street parking and provide feedback on what should be considered during the parking update process. The City will not be presenting any new regulations at this community workshop. Proposed new regulations will be presented at future public meetings.

What will be discussed?

• Overview of off-street parking update project
• Parking in Oakland
• Break out stations to discuss and get feedback on specific issues
• Open question and comment period at the end of the meeting

The Community Workshop will focus on parking that is located on private or public property off City streets. Parking that is on public streets will not be the focus of this process.

Here’s the flyer for the meeting (PDF).

And if you’re anything like most of the people who’ve asked me about this message, you don’t have the faintest idea what it means, why it is happening, or if this is some evil conspiracy on the part of the Planning Department to stick parking lots on every available surface in the city.

You might have looked for information on the City’s website, which does offer a page on devoted to the parking regulations update, but if you did that, you were most likely disappointed, since the page doesn’t actually contain any information. Presumably that will be remedied at some point in the future.

And if you pay even a little bit of attention to planning issues in Oakland, you might have thought “Wait, didn’t we just update our zoning code? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to deal with parking requirements during that process?” A cynical person might answer that yes, it would have made sense to do it then and by dragging it out into a whole separate process staff is just creating make-work to justify the continued existence of their jobs.

Off-Street Parking

So, what is off-street parking? Basically, it’s parking that isn’t on the street. So, not the metered spaces you pull into in front of a store or whatever. It’s surface lots and garages.

The City’s off-street parking requirements are the portion of the Planning Code that tells you how many parking spaces you need to provide for any specific use. This is where you would look to learn that you need to provide, for example, one parking space for every 300 square feet of floor area at your fast food restaurant in one zone, or one space for every 450 square feet in some other zone. Or that you need one parking space for every three employees at your car dealership, or one parking space per unit in your new condo building.

You can read the city’s current off-street parking regulations here (PDF).

The off-street parking portion of the Planning Code also explains things like how big off-street parking spaces need to be, where they can be located, how you know when the parking requirements apply to your building or business, and how to know when your parking requirements change. Well, “explains” might be a little generous:

If any facility, or portion thereof, which is in existence on the effective date of the zoning regulations, or of a subsequent rezoning or other amendment thereto establishing or increasing parking or loading requirements for an activity therein, is altered or changed in occupancy so as to result in an increase in the number of residential living units therein, new off-street parking as prescribed hereafter shall be provided for the added units. However, such new parking need be provided only in the amount by which the requirement prescribed hereafter for the facility after said alteration or change exceeds the requirement prescribed hereafter for the facility as it existed prior to such alteration or change; and such new parking need not be provided to the extent that existing parking exceeds the latter requirement.

So now you might be thinking that this all sounds really boring. But I’m promise it isn’t! It is actually really important. Reductions in the required number of parking spaces in multi-unit development can help lower the cost of construction, and encouraging more (and also more transit-oriented) development. Off-street parking regulations also specify requirements for things like screening and lighting off-street parking lots, both of which have public safety implications.

It’s really easy to forget sometimes just how much space parking spaces take up. And every space used for storing cars is space that is not being used for housing or for recreation or for a patio or for open space or for a water fountain or a shop or any of all the things in the world you can do with a space besides sometimes putting a car there. For a pretty striking example of other ways some of this space might be used, take a trip over to The Trappist in Old Oakland and check out their awesome outdoor patio. Three parking spaces had to be removed to make it. Was it worth it?

Sensible parking requirements don’t mandate the creation of any more spaces than are necessary. You want enough not to cause terrible problems, but not so many that you’re wasting space on parking spots that sit perpetually empty. Sometimes, parking requirements will include a maximum number of spaces you can build for any specific use. Rules like these help to encourage more transit-sensitive development and also encourages us to use the limited amount space we have in more productive ways.

So if you weren’t planning on attending because you didn’t really understand what it was about, or because you thought it sounding boring or whatever, I hope you’ll reconsider. The meeting will take place tomorrow, Thursday, September 15th at the Oakland Main Library in the Bradley Walters Community Room (downstairs in the basement) from 6 to 8 pm.

I look forward to seeing a good crowd there! And hey, since you’ll be at the library anyway, why not arrive a little early and head upstairs to the Oakland History Room, where they will be holding a reception from 5:30 to 7:30 highlighting the new History Room exhibit, Remembering and Rebuilding: A Commemoration of the Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm.

Park(ing) Day on Friday

So even if you aren’t going to the meeting, I hope you’ve at least started thinking about how much space we devote to parking. Conveniently, this Friday offers another opportunity to consider the subject.

On Park(ing) Day, held once a year, people rent on-street parking spaces, but instead of using them to store cars all day, they use them for more pleasant and inviting activities. For some examples, check out these photos Becks posted on Living in the O on Park(ing) Day a few years ago.

I was thrilled when I heard how many different locations will be participating in Park(ing) Day in Oakland this year. WOBO has a map of all of them on their website, and you can hit six of them with just a quick stroll downtown. Start at Farley’s on Grand, just off Broadway, then head straight down Broadway where there will be another one at 21st. Take a little detour onto Telegraph to hit the Marquee Lofts at 18th St, then once you hit 17th, go back to Broadway where PGA Design will be offering s’mores! Walk down Broadway a couple block more to see parklet in front of the new Oaklandish store, and then finish your tour at the Transform parklet, on 14th just off Broadway.

Under the recently adopted new downtown zoning, parking structures are allowed, but new surface parking lots are banned, in accordance with the policies for downtown Oakland laid out in our General Plan, which specifies that parking facilities in the downtown area should be “designed to enhance the pedestrian environment.”

Surface parking lots are gross

On Saturday, I took a little walk around a relatively small section of downtown, surveying the state of all the surface parking lots between 19th and Broadway and 13th and Madison.

It was really, really gross.

Some lots were better than others, and some were especially super gross. But out of all the lots I visited, there was only one that was actually clean and totally free of trash. Only two were free of graffiti.

The most common argument I hear in defense of adding new surface parking lots downtown is that even if surface parking isn’t an ideal use, it is at least better than having some an empty lot, which will inevitably become blighted and covered in trash and graffiti.

Observation indicates, however, that in reality, the opposite is true. The existing fenced vacant lots downtown, while hardly an ideal use of land, tend to remain relatively free of such things, perhaps because fences lend a sense of ownership to the land and present at least a small barrier to entrance for littering and/or other gross purposes.

Surface parking lots, on the other hand, are large expanses of open space that appears unowned. Their large blank walls welcome taggers. Their dark, open corners invite those in need of a place for sleeping or conducting other personal business. Their vast expanses of uncared for asphalt are treated as trash cans for anyone who passes by.

The deplorable condition of these lots only invites more blight. A space full of trash day after day sends a message to everyone who passes by that it’s okay to add to the pile.

As we have seen with the recent addition of a “temporary” parking lot at 14th and Harrison, it doesn’t matter what kind of conditions the City places on these permits — Oakland simply does not have the resources to monitor or enforce these conditions. And then you end up having piles of feces sitting there for three months and 20 foot tall graffiti that remains for six weeks even though we were promised the lot would be cleaned daily and all graffiti would be removed within seventy-two hours.

What kind of message does this send to people who come to our downtown? Is this the kind of welcome we want to give visitors?

I had originally planned on doing a larger section of downtown for my little parking lot blight survey, but after just going through this small section, I had to stop. I was so disgusted that I just couldn’t take it anymore.

How you can help

If you don’t want more of this kind of blight downtown, well, it would be awesome if you could come out on Wednesday night to speak at the Planning Commission against the TCUPs. The meeting starts at 6 PM.

If you can’t make it on Wednesday, you can still help out by sending an email to the Commission. Here’s a sample message to get you started, but I encourage you to personalize it with your own views.

Dear Planning Commissioners -

I am writing to ask you to vote against adopting the Temporary Conditional Use Permits that would allow for new surface parking lots in downtown Oakland. Allowing unlimited surface parking downtown would be unpleasant and unsafe. Parking lots are a magnet for blight, graffiti, and crime. I enjoy downtown and don’t want to see more cars and more curb cuts. There is no good reason to do this, it’s not part of any transportation or business strategy, and is in direct opposition to Oakland’s stated goals of created a more pedestrian-friendly and vibrant downtown. Please recommend against adopting this proposal.

The Planning Commissioners emails are as follows: dboxer@gmail.com, VienV.Truong@gmail.com, Blake.Huntsman@seiu1021.org, sgalvez@phi.org, michael.colbruno@gmail.com, mzmdesignworks@gmail.com, VinceGibbs.opc@gmail.com.

So please send an email. Or don’t, if you want more of this:

The Planning Commission discussed this proposal at their October 20th meeting, and decided that it should come back for further discussion at a later date. For more background about the proposal, you can read this post and this post that I wrote in October. That later date is this Wednesday, and although I would love to be able to talk to you today about the specifics of whatever revised proposal came out of that discussion, I can’t, because even though the meeting is only 54 hours away, the staff reports are still not available on the City’s website.

So instead, I’m going to talk to you about a different surface parking lot, located at the corner of 14th and Harrison downtown.

1331 Harrison

The lot is entitled for a high rise building, which the developer doesn’t want to build right now because of the current market conditions. So while he is waiting for the market to rebound, he wanted the City to allow him to use the lot as a surface parking lot temporarily.

When the proposal for Temporary Condition Use Permits (TCUPs) first came before the Planning Commission’s Zoning Update Committee last February, this lot was used as an example of why the TCUPs were necessary. However, the applicant ultimately choose not to wait for the TCUPs to pass and instead just applied for a variance.

So this concept of having these new surface parking lots for only a few years is predicated on the idea that current market conditions do not allow developers to build the “highest and best use” of vacant property, so if we allow them to make some money for a little while through paid parking, that can hold them over until we’re ready to build skyscrapers in a few years.

I’m somewhat skeptical about that, especially considering that a large part of the reason surface parking lots are not allowed under the new downtown zoning is because permitting surface parking is pretty much universally understood to discourage development and encourage property owners to hold on to vacant land indefinitely. My thoughts on the matter are pretty well summed up in the comments Commission Doug Boxer made at the June 16th, 2010 Planning Commission meeting when this particular lot was considered.

But when this lot came to the Planning Commission, I did not object to the variance, even though I am obviously not a fan of new parking lots. In fact, I ceded my speaking time to someone who spoke in support of the application.

My logic went like this. First, this lot had already been a parking lot, so the curb cuts and all that were already there, even though it wasn’t being used for parking at the moment. I could never support an application that created new curb cuts for surface parking, but in this case, that damage had already been done.

Second, the applicant offered a lot of mitigations that I thought were good. They said were going to remove litter from the site daily, keep it free of graffiti, provide landscaping, devote a space to city car share or a similar service, include secure bicycle parking, and line the Harrison side of the lot with art panels. Here’s the parking operator telling the City Council about their plans.

So I thought, you know, as much as I would like to see as little surface parking as possible downtown, this did sound like a genuine improvement over the existing situation. The art panels would shield pedestrians from the parking on a least one side, landscaping would combat the visual blight from an empty space, we can definitely use more quality bike parking, and they seemed to have a genuine commitment to keeping the lot clean.

Additionally, I really agreed with what Daniel Schulman said when speaking on the item at Planning Commission, about how the project was better for having been forced to go through a public hearing process, and that we should encourage this kind of process for people who want temporary uses rather than just awarding them the TCUPs automatically.

The only thing that bothered me about the whole thing was when Commissioner Sandra Gálvez asked the applicant if he would be willing to add some lighting to the lot so people would feel safer at night, and he said no, because nobody would be parking there at night. With two nightclubs and a restaurant on the block, it seemed improbable to me that there was no potential nighttime use for parking, so I was a little irritated at their unwillingness to make that concession.

But I wanted to be reasonable, and I appreciated the fact that they went this route instead of the TCUP route, so I took their promises in good faith.

The Planning Commission was unable to make a decision for or against approving the lot, so it got forwarded to the City Council, who approved it unanimously in July. (You can watch the full video of that item here.

A big mess

So. I see this lot all the time, since I walk past it on my way to and from work. You can imagine my irritation when one day I walked past, and saw that the fence was gone and the space was now a parking lot, but there was none of the promised landscaping, art panels, or bicycle parking. There was, however, graffiti.

But as much as I would prefer that the community receives their promised benefits as soon as the property owner starts to get his, I tried to put aside my annoyance and remind myself that it could take a while to arrange for and install art, so I should just be patient.

It was frustrating, though, to walk past every day and see the lot constantly filled with trash. I had thought, with someone taking responsibility for maintaining the space, it would be cleaner than it used to be and have less graffiti. It turned out to be the opposite. It’s dirtier than ever! The promised daily litter “removal,” in practice, turned out to be a regular pushing of all the trash into the back half of the lot. Day after day I would go by and see the exact same litter sitting there. Some larger items stayed for weeks.

The place is, in short, a filthy mess.

A few months after the lot opened, and a couple of days before the Planning Commission considered the T-CUP proposal, a bike rack finally appeared. Now, as far as I understand the rules, if your rack isn’t in the public right of way (which this one isn’t), then you can use whatever kind of bike rack you want. Still, when they talked about “secure” bike parking at the Planning Commission, I just assumed (apparently, in error), that they were talking about double point of contact racks that would comply with the City of Oakland’s Bicycle Parking guidelines (PDF).

Instead, we got this. For those not acquainted with bicycle parking design principles, you’re really not supposed to use these kinds of racks anymore because the offer only a single point of contact and are therefore less secure.

I never see any bicycles parked here, day or night, although I really couldn’t say whether that is due to the nature of the rack or simple lack of demand.

Graffiti has remained a problem. This lovely piece of work was up for over a month.

Posts for the promised art panels went up a couple months ago, but we are still waiting for the art.

So this bothers me. Like I said before, I think it’s reasonable to allow some period of time for the property owner to get it together. But they have been operating a parking lot here since August, and it is now January. How long is it reasonable to make the public wait for you to do something that was part of your conditions of approval? Is six months reasonable? Is it too long? I want to be understanding, but I lean towards the side of it being too long.

The promised landscaping has also not materialized, unless you count the weeds growing all up along the edge of the lot. Instead, it’s just the same thing day after day — trash.

And graffiti.

And more trash.

And more graffiti.

And broken glass.

And more trash. Sometimes really disgusting trash, like in this photo that I took on November 17th.

Or in this photo of the same spot in the lot that I took this morning.

I could go on. I have literally hundreds of photos of the trash and graffiti all over this lot over the past six months, but I think you get the idea.

TCUPs at Planning Commission

I think the case of this specific lot should serve as a warning as we consider broadly allowing new surface parking lots downtown under the TCUP proposal. The argument for allowing them is that they reduce blight, but in this case, that clearly hasn’t happened. It has increased blight. Why should we expect anything different of any other new surface parking lot? Sure, we can put whatever conditions we want on them with public art and landscaping and litter and graffiti removal, but if the City lacks the resources to go around enforcing those conditions, they become meaningless.

For those who do not want to see more surface parking downtown, the Planning Commission meets this Wednesday, January 19th at 6 PM. I have a really hard time predicting how long things are going to take at Planning Commission — every time I try to predict, I get it wrong. So while I can tell you that TCUPs are item number 6 on the agenda, I really cannot say when they will probably be heard. I would recommend getting to the meeting shortly after it starts at 6 PM.

I’ll post again about this once the staff report is available. If you can’t attend the meeting in person, but feel strongly about the issue, you can e-mail your thoughts to the Commission — all the Commissioners e-mail addresses are listed on the Planning Commission roster.

Update: Art on the lot

So the day after I posted this, work apparently began on installing the promised art panels on the lot. As Carlos notes in his comment below, he sent me some pictures, so I’m updating the post to include them. Note the graffiti still present in the background.

The proposal would provide standards and procedures for temporary uses and responds to an economic climate that has hindered permanent and highest-use development sites in Oakland.

The original report (PDF) and agenda description on this time for the Zoning Update Committee back in February made it out like this was all about creating parks and community gardens on otherwise vacant space. Sounds cool, right? Ha! During the actual hearing, it became clear that the primary anticipated use for the TCUPs would be “temporary” surface parking lots downtown. I mean, they didn’t even pretend. The current staff report (PDF) acknowledges this more clearly:

One example of this would be allowing surface auto-fee parking lots in the Central Business District for a three-year period; the existing CBD Planning Code regulations allow auto-fee parking, but limitations require the parking to be enclosed and above the ground floor. Under the proposed amendment, the CBD limitations could be relaxed and surface parking would be allowed only on a short-term temporary basis. This would allow an economically viable, though not necessarily the highest and best, use of a site that might otherwise be undeveloped in this economy. The short timeframe would not hinder development of a permanent and better use for the site should the economy improve in the near future.

So basically, right now, according to the new downtown zoning code that went through like a year and a half of public hearings before being adopted in the summer of 2009, you can build parking structures downtown, but you can’t build new surface parking lots. This is because the goal of the new downtown zoning, as was stated over and over and over again during the process, is to create a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly downtown and surface parking lots are pretty much universally understood to disrupt the pedestrian experience rather than enhance it. I can’t recall a single person during the entire year and a half long process (which, BTW, involved more public comment that anyone really wants to listen to on a single subject) ever saying one critical thing about the fact that new surface parking lots would be banned under the new zoning. In fact, this aspect of the new zoning was commended on multiple occasions. Anyway.

The proposed permits would last for three years, and allow a one-year extension.

Options presented for Planning Commission consideration on Wednesday include allowing TCUPs on a citywide basis for a trial period with an established sunset date, allowing TCUPs for a trial period only within the downtown area, and allowing TCUPs citywide but not for surface parking lots. The staff report (PDF) notes that the last of these “would not address actual demand for temporary permits, all of which are for surface parking.”

How much demand is there for this? Doesn’t seem like a ton. Again, the staff report (PDF) explains:

At this time, actual interest in temporary permits for surface parking includes four permit applications for a total of over 200 spaces, including sites in West Oakland, the Central Business District, and near the Oakland International Airport. In addition, one potential applicant has contacted staff regarding the possibility of temporary surface parking in the Fruitvale District of Oakland.

An aside

On a somewhat related note — does anyone else find the new way they’re doing the Planning Commission agendas and reports really irritating? I mean, yes, the old system wasn’t perfect and the links to the reports didn’t work off the agenda like half the time. But now the way they do it, where all the reports and all the attachments for the meeting are there in the same giant PDF file as the agenda? It’s a pain in the ass.

I mean, first of all, if I just want to like, check on the order of agenda items or something, it means I have to download a freaking 50MB file, which, yeah, isn’t like the end of the world or anything, but it is also something that I can’t just like, do on my phone. And then having to page through like 300+ pages of random crap hunting for the report on the item I’m interested in? It’s a pain. And a waste of time. And just so aggressively unfriendly to the public. I mean, I’m willing to put up with it, but I can imagine a lot of people who had more of a passing interest in one item or another taking one look at that big mess and just saying the hell with it. Ugh, anyway. I have veered too far off topic.

Implementation problems with the TCUP concept

I was able to attend the first of the hearings about the temporary conditional use permits (TCUP) before the zoning update committee, but I was out of town for the second, so I don’t know what went on there.

At the meeting I did go to, there was this whole long discussion that made absolutely no sense to me about how the City doesn’t actually have the ability to track these permits so that they would know when they expire.

Now, don’t get me wrong. That does sound like the City of Oakland. But it also sounds nonsensical. I mean, as Commission Michael Colbruno pointed out at the meeting, you can just set up a reminder three years into the future on a freaking Outlook calendar. Staff had some complicated explanation about turnover or something and how there’s no way to know who would be responsible for making sure they stop using the parking lots when the permits expire and that’s why the Outlook solution is impractical.

Now I can think of about ten different ways around that, but I’m sure that the City could manage to find elaborate reasons for why none of them would work either. In any case, if worst came to worst and nobody could figure out any way to use a computer to track this, it seems like you could just slap some butcher paper on a spare wall, draw a calendar on it, and make marks about when different permits expire if you really wanted to.

But hell. I’m against the TCUPs, so if they’re gonna say they can’t track them, well, I’ll take them at their word because that’s just one more argument in favor of my side. Right? I mean, if you can’t track when they expire, then how the hell are they going to be temporary? Honor system?

19th and Telegraph

Now of course, a big part of this whole thing in the first place (and this was acknowledged by staff at the Zoning Update Committee meeting, so it really is not just me being paranoid) is that the Redevelopment Agency was still determined to turn that vacant lot on 19th and Telegraph into a parking lot, even though the Council had said that it should be used for art and of course surface parking lots are against the law downtown due to the new zoning. So if they want it, they have to change the zoning. Voila! TCUPs!

Of course, this is all no longer even relevant because, as you probably read already on Living in the O, the City has recently received an NEA grant to turn the lot into an outdoor cultural space and sculpture garden.

Let’s just pause there for a second and take a moment to appreciate the persistence of the City’s public art staff for making this happen! Hooray for City workers who can see there is more to creating vibrant, walkable neighborhoods than filling them with a sea of cars!

Anyway.

Downtown is no place for surface parking

Look, I think the TCUPs are just straight-up bad policy. You either zone for something because you think it belongs in a place or you don’t. That seems very straightforward to me. But my primary concern is downtown. If someone wants to make a new surface parking lot out next to the airport, well, I don’t really give a hoot. But surface parking does not belong in Oakland’s Central Business District. We already have too much of it. It is already a problem for downtown, and we absolutely do not need any more.

Surface parking lots damage the urban fabric and disrupt the pedestrian experience with their many curb cuts and constant flow of cars in and out. Additionally, excessive surface parking reduces the demand for structured parking, which is a much more efficient use of space. They are a blighting influence on neighborhoods and magnets for crime. In short, they have no place in an urban context.

It is, of course, totally natural to be sympathetic to any individual property owner looking to find a way to generate some revenue off of unproductive land. But you have to think about the whole picture. Sure, an investor who just wants to build a skyscraper will benefit somewhat by being able to make a little money off his land while he sits on it. But other investors benefit from downtown Oakland being a walkable, vibrant, pedestrian-friendly place. Suburban land uses are bad for their investment. And ultimately, that hurts Mr. Skyscraper too, because those condos, when and if they ever get built, will be worth more if they are in an exciting urban neighborhood rather than some wasteland full of cars.

And that’s what seems to have been completely forgotten in this whole discussion. Enhancing downtown’s vibrancy is about much more than constructing a bunch of new skyscrapers. While we may may have to wait a while for the economy to recover before we see new high-rise construction, the revitalization of the downtown area has not only been continuing, it has been stretching out to parts of downtown that had previously not enjoyed much activity after 5 PM.

For the past few years, new DTO nightlife had largely been limited to a few relatively small areas, mostly in the Uptown neighborhood immediately surrounding the Fox Theater and in Old Oakland. More recently, we’ve seen new activity on the other side of Broadway, with the phenomenally successful Layover on Franklin Street, the absolutely adorable newly opened Bar 355 on 19th and Webster, and Geisha on 14th and Harrison. Additionally, we’ve got the exciting new restaurant Disco Volante opening soon at 14th and Webster.

These are the sorts of exciting things we want downtown. And they’re happening! To suggest that we throw out the downtown zoning simply because we can’t have new high-rises for a while suggests that the entire point of the year and a half long exercise in creating these regulations was to accommodate more tall buildings. While that may have been the goal for some participants, and certainly was a goal for me, I came away from the process with the understanding that we were trying to encourage a diversity of investment and activity in the downtown area, and create a thriving, pedestrian-oriented urban district.

This is not to suggest that none of these businesses require parking, only that parking needs should be thoughtfully considered. For example, when a proposal for a new parking lot on 14th and Harrison came before the Planning Commission in June, Commissioner Sandra Galvez asked if there were any accommodations planned to improve nighttime safety at the lot, such as lighting, and the parking lot operator responded that they did not anticipate having any business at night.

Now, of course, the parking lot is there and there are no lights and people who park there at night all get their windows smashed! Ugh, anyway. More on that damn lot another time.

Remember the General Plan

Finally, let’s consider the context in which we are supposed to be making zoning decisions — Oakland’s General Plan. Despite the staff report’s (PDF) assertion that “This amendment would not conflict with any goals of objectives of the General Plan,” it kind of obviously does. Nobody in the world thinks that surface parking lots are good for pedestrians. And the downtown section of the Land Use and Transportation Element (PDF) of the General Plan is all about pedestrian activity. Let’s take a look at some of these policies:

Policy D3.1 Promoting Pedestrians
Pedestrian-friendly commercial areas should be promoted.

Policy D3.2 Incorporating Parking Facilities
New parking facilities for cars and bicycles should be incorporated into the design of any project in a manner that encourages and promotes safe pedestrian activity.

Policy D5.1 Encouraging Twenty-Four Hour Activity
Activities and amenities that encourage pedestrian traffic during the work week, as well as evenings and weekends should be promoted.

Policy D6.1 Developing Vacant Lots
Construction on vacant land or to replace surface parking lots should be encouraged throughout the downtown, where possible.

Policy D13.2 Providing Parking
An adequate quantity of car, bicycle, and truck parking, which has been designed to enhance the pedestrian environment, should be provided to encourage housing development and the economic vitality of commercial, office, entertainment, and mixed use areas.

These goal of all these policies is to make downtown Oakland a more successful urban space and to make it welcoming to pedestrians. Surface parking lots are in direct opposition to those goals. They create an inhospitable pedestrian environment, which, in turn, reduces the appeal of the active ground floor uses like retail and entertainment that we are trying to attract.

Can you lend a hand to keep surface parking lots out of downtown

Look, I know that people are busy and that coming down to City Hall on a weeknight is like, the last thing in the world that anyone wants to do. And I know that the elections are fast approaching and there is phone banking to do. But this is important. The TCUPs would be just so awful for downtown. The meeting starts at 6 this Wednesday, October 20th (PDF), although the TCUPs probably will not be heard until sometime after 7. I’ll be there!

If you can’t come, you can help by sending an e-mail to the Planning Commissioners about the subject. The e-mail contact info for all of them is available on the Planning Commission roster (PDF).

Now, I have never owned a car since I’ve lived in Oakland. In fact, I have never once even driven a car in Oakland. So where you are and are not allowed to park isn’t something I spend a whole lot of time thinking about. I actually only learned that you weren’t allowed to park on that part of Lakeshore on the weekends like nine months ago, when someone brought it up during a conversation that I think was about silly outdated laws or something. Or maybe it was about sideshows. I can’t remember. Anyway.

Apparently, there used to be this big problem with people cruising around the Lake on weekends. People used to come to Oakland from all over the place to drive around Lake Merritt and cause trouble. Or something like that. The friend who was telling me about this had a more colorful description of the situation, but since my memory isn’t what it used to be, I’m afraid I can’t recall the whole thing, and you’ll have to settle for just sharing the drier version from the staff report (PDF):

In 1985, traffic congestion, drug dealing, panhandling and cruising along Lakeshore Avenue were concerns of the residents and the Oakland Police Department (OPD). Today, these concerns no longer exist, and several community members have contacted the City requesting modification of the parking restrictions currently in place. OPD agrees that these limits are no longer necessary.

A few months ago, Councilmembers Pat Kernighan and Nancy Nadel sent out requests in their e-mail newsletters for people to share their thoughts on whether we should remove the no parking restriction on Lakeshore or not. Not having strong feelings on the subject either way, I did not respond. 390 other people did, and 79% of them said that they thought parking should be allowed. If I had bothered to respond, I probably would have said that I thought it should be allowed also, because, you know, why not? Cruising isn’t a problem anymore. But really, I didn’t give the issue a whole lot of thought.

But as it turns out, some other people did, and two of them felt strongly enough about the subject to come to the Public Works Committee on Tuesday morning and speak against the removal of the no parking restriction. When the first of them came up and started talking about how he was against it, I totally rolled my eyes. Like, get over it dude, I don’t like cars either, but learn to pick your battles because this is just not that big a deal. Who cares if a few more people can park by the Lake?

But then as I listened to him, and the other speaker that followed, I found myself thinking that they actually had some pretty solid points. And by the end, I was not so sure that allowing the new parking around the Lake on weekends was such a good idea after all, and was definitely persuaded that at the very least, we should not be so cavalier about making decisions like this. Then I started feeling totally guilty for just assuming the City should allow the parking in the first place.

You guys should watch them. I showed the video to a friend the other night, one who is also generally not inclined to side with the cars, and he had the exact same reaction as I first had when I brought up the subject. But I was like “No, no, just watch this. It will only take a few minutes.” And he begrudgingly consented, and by the end, he was like “Hey. They actually have a good point.”

Maybe it’s okay to let people park on Lakeshore on weekends, maybe it’s not such a great idea. But it really is the sort of decision that deserves more thought than “A bunch of people told us they want more parking. I guess we should do it.” Of course if you ask people if they want more free parking, they are going to say that they do. That’s not a rational basis for transportation decision making.

The staff report (PDF) about this is like, two pages. And basically all it says is that they banned parking on the weekend in the 80s and now people want it so we should do it. But how does this fit into our other goals? Will there be an increased risk to bicyclists due to doorings, as the speaker said? How does this relate to the reduced auto usage goals that will be mandated in the energy and climate action plan?

But the point they made that got me the most was about how it may impact the experience of visiting the Lake. This is being sold as a way to allow more people to enjoy the Lake. But is surrounding a park with cars really the best way to make Lake Merritt’s natural beauty more enjoyable? I mean, look at this picture.

This is what we’ve got going on over on my side of the Lake, and every single time I walk by it, I get all stressed out and angry and completely grossed out. I mean, it’s disgusting. And it completely takes you out of the experience of enjoying the grass and the trees and the water that you’ve been walking past.

I’m not saying that it’s exactly the same thing. I understand that what they want to do on Lakeshore is allow parking on the street, not two rows of cars on the freaking sidewalk, but I do think that this decision is a good example of how the City really needs to put more thought into the choices and rules we make about parking in general, and also about how we want to encourage people to use open space.

The Committee passed the proposal, and At-large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan suggested (in response to other comments people had been making about the three hour time limit) that maybe the best solution for parking around the Lake would be to have no time limits and just meter it, which would encourage turnover but also allow people if who so desire to come and park and stay at the Lake for a long time without having to worry about getting a ticket. So now staff is going to look into this area and the idea of metering there as part of the Citywide parking study.

The full video of the discussion is above, if you’re interested.

Do you guys remember a couple months ago when the City Council was talking about how they could bring in some extra revenue by limiting the amount of City employees who got free parking in City garages and renting those spaces out to the public instead? Except that the list was like, really not very limited (see the list here) and it turned out that all that free employee parking is costing the City like $400,000 a year?

So when this came to the Council, District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan asked for the free parking issue to return to Committee, and that she would like staff to address more of the revenue implications of all the free parking, say what the monthly charge at the garages are, and explain whether there are any employees who have free parking guaranteed by their collective bargaining agreement. Also, they were going to look into the option of providing some sort of transit pass for City employees. Which makes sense, right? After all, we have terrible budget problems. And we have been officially a “transit first” City since 1996. So giving employees transit passes instead of free parking spaces that cost the City money makes a lot of sense and would seem to be consistent with adopted City of Oakland policy. Right?

Well, maybe not. Perhaps that logic exists only in my head. The free parking issue returns to Committee on Tuesday. The new report (PDF) offers none of the revenue related information requested — not even a passing reference to the $400,000 in forgone revenue that was stated at the previous committee meeting. Instead, it talks about a marketing campaign the Parking Division is going to start to advertise the newly freed up parking spaces on the upper floors of the Clay Street garage.

As for the transit alternative, well, it’s hard to imagine how that idea could have been taken less seriously. From the report (PDF):

In February, City employees with parking privileges were asked if they would be interested in receiving a free public transit pass in lieu of free parking benefits. Of the 154 who responded to a survey, 8 indicated interest and 146 did not. The most frequently cited reason for not using public transit was that employee worked late hours, need their vehicle during the day to perform site visits and other City work, make side trips before and after work such as day care, or that public transit was not convenient to their place of residence.

While current interest among City employees seems to be low, staff nevertheless explored the option of establishing a transit pass program in the City, at the request of the City Council. Staff identified three transit options provided by other adjacent municipalities. Oakland already has in place one of the three programs and may offer additional options if there is sufficient interest.

• AC Transit Easy Pass program. Under this program, the City can purchase AC Traqnsit passes at a discounted rate. AC Transit requires that a minimum of 100 employees participate in order to implement the program. The discount increases as the volume of passes purchased increase. For 100 to 500 employees participating in the program, the City would pay between $77 and $115 per year per pass. If the City purchase 100 passes at $115, the annual cost to the City would be $11,5000.
• Employee transportation accounts. Some municipalities crease transit accounts into which a specific dollar amount is deposited that employees can use to pay for transportation alternatives, such as BART tickets, van pool, bus passes, bicycle commuting or paid parking. The City of Berkeley, for example, deposits $20 each month into an account that employees can use towards the transportation option the employee chooses.
• Commuter Benefit Program. Allows an employee the opportunity to set aside pre-taxed dollars that are specifically designated for utilizing mass transit. The City of Oakland already has this program available for its employees.

What’s that, you say? You asked 150 people if they would rather have free parking or a bus pass, and most of them didn’t say a bus pass? No way. I’m shocked.

Oh, except I’m not at all. It doesn’t take a Masters Degree in Transportation Planning to figure out that if you make driving cheaper and easier than other forms of transportation, people will choose to drive instead of taking the bus.

There is simply no excuse for the amount of free parking the City gives away, especially in light of the devastating cuts to basic services they’ve been making for two years, and will continue to make. If they want to reserve parking spaces for certain employees, and those employees want to pay for a reserved space, that’s fine.

The report also completely misses the entire point of an EasyPass program, which is that you give the passes to everybody. Not just people you would otherwise give free parking to. The ridiculous theoretical Easy Pass program described in the report essentially comes down to buying bus passes for the City Council and their staff, plus Department heads. What a joke. A Citywide EasyPass program for employees would likely cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000 a year. Which, for the math challenged, is $100,000 less than the cost of giving away all this parking.

If cost is still an issue, there are ways to reduce the financial impact of the program. For example, instead of giving all employees the Easy Pass, the City could offer it at cost or half-cost to anyone who wants it. And not offer any free parking. This would result in a slightly higher per-pass price due to a lower number of participants, but I guarantee you that when you go around offering unlimited bus passes to people at $100 per year (versus $80 per month), you’re going to get a lot of takers.

The dismissive attitude towards a simple measure that will encourage transit use among City employees, one that is already in place and unbelievably successful in Berkeley and Alameda, is truly disheartening.

The Council is always claiming they support public transit and want to encourage people to use public transit and that they love transit oriented development and blah blah blah blah blah. But change begins at home. Apparently, in the City of Oakland, “transit first” is really nothing more than a catchy slogan.

The Finance Committee meets at 11 AM (PDF) next Tuesday, April 13th. Contact info for members below:

• District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan:
  E-mail: pkernighan@oaklandnet.com, Phone: (510) 238-7002
• District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel:
  E-mail: nnadel@oaklandnet.com, Phone: (510) 238-7003
• District 4 Councilmember Jean Quan:
  E-mail: jquan@oaklandnet.com, Phone: (510) 238-7004
• District 5 Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente:
  E-mail: idelafuente@oaklandnet.com, Phone: (510) 238-7005

Related Posts

• 05.04.2010: Free employee parking will be around a little longer
• 01.12.2010: Free parking for City employees. Why?

Anyway, as you likely recall, after two contentious meetings, the Council voted to reverse their June decision that extend the parking meter hours until 8 and to make up for the lost revenue through a combination of steps, including the addition of 250 parking meters Citywide (PDF).

So two weeks ago at the Council’s Finance & Management Committee meeting, staff offered a list of 400 possible locations for the new parking meters (PDF). The list included the following locations:

• Lakeshore to 22nd on International Boulevard: 160 metered spaces
• 38th to 54th on International Boulevard: 130 metered spaces
• 4th to 14th on East 12th Street: 70 metered spaces
• 15th to 20th on Telegraph Avenue: 40 metered spaces

Now, almost all of those meter locations are in Council districts 5 and 2. Normal people tend not to think about things in those terms, but elected officials certainly do. So, as you can imagine, District 5 Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente and District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan were, um, none too pleased with the list.

The Committee said that Council’s original direction had been for the new meters to be evenly distributed throughout all seven Council districts, and that staff should go back and do it that way. Staff then decided that the best way to handle that was to ask each Councilmember to make a list of where they think 60 parking meters should go in their district. I don’t think I need to bother explaining why this is an staggeringly misguided way to approach parking policy.

If it isn’t obvious to you why this is a bad idea and you happen to be free this evening, allow me to suggest an event that you will likely find enlightening. High Cost of Free Parking author Donald Shoup will be speaking tonight in Lafayette. I’m out of town so I can’t go, but reports from people who trekked down to San Jose last night for the show have been uniformly laudatory.

The event will be held at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center Community Hall from 6 to 9 PM at 7 PM (see Dan’s comments below) at 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd in Lafayette (map here). And no, you don’t have to drive there! It’s less than a half mile walk from the Lafayette BART station.

Here’s the event description:

Mark your calendars!! On Thursday evening, February 25th, the cities of Lafayette and Walnut Creek will co-host a presentation on “Parking Policies in the Downtown” at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center. The speaker, Donald Shoup, is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and has served as the Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. He has extensively studied parking as a key link between transportation and land use, with important consequences for cities, the economy, and the environment. His influential book, The High Cost of Free Parking, is leading a growing number of cities to charge fair market prices for curb parking, dedicate the resulting revenue to finance public services in the metered districts, and reduce or remove off-street parking requirements.

I really wish I could go to this, and I hope some of you will and report back to us. Shoup’s work gets referenced pretty frequently in policy discussions when parking comes up in Oakland, but the nuances of his research and suggestions are, frankly, very rarely stated accurately. I get that it’s a long book, and an expensive one, but I still wish more people would take the time to sit down and read it. Attending the presentation is certainly going to be a substantially faster way to learn.

One of the issues raised as part of budget discussions earlier this year was the cost of providing free parking in City garages to City employees. Parking spaces occupied by staff are parking spaces not available to the general public. Since we charge to park in the garages, every time we give away a parking space to staff for free, we are losing potential revenue that would come from having paying drivers occupy those spaces.

In order to minimize the lost revenue, the Committee today considered a proposal that would clearly define which City employees are eligible to receive free parking. I thought this was a good idea when they talked about it before, but after reading the list, I have a hard time seeing the point of any of this. Here’s the list of who would get free parking spaces under the plan:

• City Council: two spaces for Councilmembers (one on-street and one in the garage), plus two spaces each for staff
• Mayor: one space, plus seven spaces for staff
• City Auditor: one space, plus two spaces for staff
• City Attorney: one space, plus seven spaces for staff
• City Administrator: one space, plus five spaces for staff
• City Clerk: one space, plus one space for staff
• Agency Directors and Department Heads: one space
• Deputy and Assistant Directors: one space
• “Employees who are required to use their vehicles in the performance of assigned duties or whose work assignments regularly require that they work late hours”: one space, granted on a case-by-case basis by the City Administrator
• “Employees needing parking on a seasonal basis for the duration of time where there is a need to work late/irregular hours”: one space after 5 PM while they’re working late, granted on a case-by-case basis by the City Administrator

Staff estimates that this will free up a total of 33 parking spaces in the garage, bringing the City around $60,000 extra per year, which is, as District 4 Councilmember Jean Quan noted, “significantly less” money that the Council had expected to get out of the policy change.

The discussion started out strong, with District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan asking why the hell the report (PDF) didn’t even mention what all this free parking costs the City. WORD. Then she asked why we aren’t talking about providing monthly transit passes for employees, if we are, as we claim to be, a “transit first” city. Again, WORD.

Assistant City Administrator Marianna Marysheva-Martinez answered that with the combined total of around 200 city employees receiving free parking, we’re looking at a potential total of “just under $400,000 a year in foregone revenue.” Which, obviously. Parking is expensive. But also, WOAH. You would think that a figure like that would get everyone on that Committee pretty worked up and wanting to rethink this whole free parking thing. After all, they all know perfectly well just how staggering the budget cuts they’re going to have to make in just a few weeks are, and $400,000 is kind of a fortune.

Hahahaha! Committee members mostly expressed concerns about the categories of free parking where the City Administrator gets discretion in authorizing the privileges. In the end, they addressed the problem by requesting an annual report of how many people are getting free parking, so they can make sure the discretion isn’t being abused. Way to completely miss the point, which should be why the hell are we giving free parking to anyone? Reserved spaces in the garage, sure. I have zero problem with that. But the rationale behind saying that people shouldn’t have to pay for those spaces, just like everyone else who rents a monthly space, well, it’s just completely beyond me.

What discussion there was of transit alternatives was equally disappointing. I assumed, God knows why, when the phrase “transit pass” first came up, that they were talking about exploring an EasyPass program with AC Transit. No. Instead, the idea that got floated was that since a parking space could be rented for roughly $150 a month and a monthly transit pass costs $90 a month (which is wrong, BTW. AC Transit monthly bus passes cost $80), we could potentially save $60 per person by offering just the employees who were getting free parking the option of taking a monthly pass instead. Holy brain-dead inefficiency.

The Committee suggested we should go do a survey of all the people getting free parking to see if they were even interested in trading the space for a transit pass. Jean Quan suggested that we consider broadening the eligibility for a transit pass to everyone who receives an auto allowance as well, and staff said they would take a look at what other cities are doing and return with a report on the City’s options in March.

What other cities, like Alameda and Berkeley, and other local institutions, like Mills College, the Peralta Colleges, and UC Berkeley do not do is go to the AC Transit ticket office and buy off the shelf monthly passes for employees who elect to take them. They participate in AC Transit’s EasyPass program. With EasyPass, all employees are offered unlimited AC Transit passes loaded on TransLink cards. The cost per employee of the program is unique to every situation, but is based on pricing matrix where the City of Oakland, would, at most, be paying an annual per employee cost less than what the City seems to think it would cost to buy a pass each month.

Personally, I think it’s a no brainer that the City, which loves to bill itself as being so incredibly green and environmentally friendly, is beyond overdue for doing EasyPass. I understand, however, that reasonable people might argue that we can’t afford to start it right now, because it would cost money. I’m not unsympathetic to that argument, and if it doesn’t work out right now because of the budget, well, I wouldn’t think that’s the end of the world either. But I find it mind boggling that no one at the meeting even brought it up as an option. And whether we offer a transit option of any sort or not, there is simply no excuse for sacrificing this level of potential revenue by letting so damn many (or any) people park in the City’s garages for free.

Related Posts

• 05.04.2010: Free employee parking will be around a little longer
• 04.09.2010: Oakland: “Transit-first” only on paper

As most of you probably remember, the City Council voted to raise the hourly parking meter price to $2 and extend the operating hours of parking meters from 6 to 8 PM as part of this summer’s budget process. The changes, coupled with a widespread perception of increased aggressiveness in parking enforcement and one very angry business owner with a very large billboard, created significant outcry among both residents and business groups. In response to the vocal opposition, the Council agreed to revisit the parking issue.

At first, most Councilmembers insisted they would not be willing to roll back the parking meter hours unless they could find a way to make up the revenue from “within the parking world,” so that the rollback would not further impact City services. When it became clear that there was not some magic way nobody had thought of before to generate another million dollars a year from parking, they changed their minds, and consented to rolling the meter hours back to 6 PM anyway. The lost money was to be supplemented with a combination of parking enforcement measures backed by unrealistic revenue assumptions and revenue from a future billboard agreement. The angry people (most of them, anyway) went away, and Council meetings are once again relatively quiet.

Another part of the agreement to roll back the meter hours was that staff would conduct a citywide parking study to inform future parking-related decisions. On Tuesday, the Public Works Committee discussed what exactly that study will involve.

Staff’s presentation was great. They propose a departure from the City’s current approach to parking management, where parking is looked at not simply as a revenue source, but as a “tool to enhance economic and community development,” and looking at revenue generated by paid parking as only a secondary function, the primary function being that people coming to commercial districts always have a place to park.

To guide the study, staff proposed the following set of principles:

• Parking should be actively managed to maximize use and economic development
  • Parking should be treated as an asset that works to bolster the economic vitality of neighborhood commercial areas
  • Parking should be managed to achieve an approximate 85% maximum occupancy per block, so that there will always be some parking available to shoppers and visitors
  • Parking should be priced to achieve usage goals (“market pricing”); market prices may vary by area, and by time of day
  • Whenever possible, a portion of parking revenue should be reinvested directly back to neighborhood commercial district improvements, potentially through a mechanism such as a parking benefit district
• Parking should be easy for customers
  • Costs, rules and penalties should be easily comprehensible
  • A variety of fare media (prepaid cards, credit cards, cash) should be available
  • If possible, and where appropriate, time limits should be avoided in favor of market pricing
  • The role of tickets should be minimized in generated parking revenue; it should be easier to pay parking fees, which may lower the incidence of tickets
• Parking policy and regulations should help the City meet other transportation, land use, and environmental goals
  • Pricing and policies should encourage a “park once” approach, rather than driving from store to store within a commercial district
  • Parking should be part of a multi-modal approach to developing neighborhood transportation infrastructure, which also includes bike, pedestrian and transit facilities

It’s an excellent, common-sense list.

Using these guiding principles, staff would spend the next X months conducting the requested parking study. It would go like this. First, staff would attempt to work with stakeholders (property owners, businesses, and residents) to identify their parking issues through a combination of public workshops, interviews, and surveys. Based on this, a set of pilot study areas would be selected.

This would be followed by a period of data collection in the pilot study areas, where parking inventory (on and off street) would be cataloged and parking occupancy in different areas and different times of day would be measured. The information would be used to “develop a parking profile that identifies when parking is actually being used – weekday/weekend, midday/evening – and who’s using it, and why.”

The parking profile would be then used to create a parking management plan, which would then be brought back to stakeholders for feedback and refinement.

In terms of a timeline, the stakeholder outreach period would begin this winter, and staff would return to Council in the spring with a set of policy recommendations and three pilot study areas. Data would be collected during the late spring, recommendations for hours, rates, and so on would be offered up for stakeholder feedback over the summer, and Council would look at a final proposal next fall.

But it wasn’t just that staff’s presentation and proposal were so good that made the meeting so enjoyable. The discussion among the Committee was great as well.

District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks was insistent that parking not be explored in a vacuum, but as part of a more wholistic and comprehensive transportation policy. Other Committee members agreed, and asked for a reordering of the study’s principles, so that the last one (about parking policy helping the City meet other goals) would become the first and most important.

Most of the conversation was focused broadly, although At-large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan raised a few specific issues, saying that the needs of delivery vehicles in particular should be looked at, and finding ways to encourage the use of transportation alternatives for employees should be a major concern, since a single parking space can accommodate multiple customers throughout the day if it is not being occupied by one employee.

Kaplan went on to suggest that before the parking study is completed, the Council work with their State lobbyist to change some State laws in ways that could help the City better manage parking, and also help financially. She noted, as many people have over the past six months, that much of Oakland’s on-street parking supply is occupied by cars with disabled parking placards, many of which are clearly not legitimate. This City’s ability to enforce against this problem is limited, but perhaps the problem could be ameliorated to some degree by the removal of the primary incentive for such abuse – free parking.

Personally, I’ve never thought it made sense to not charge cars with disabled placards for parking meters. The point of the placards is to give those with limited mobility better access to close-in parking spaces. Anyway, it turns out that it’s State law that mandates disabled parking be free, so Kaplan suggested we work to get that changed.

She also raised a second State issue, which is that Oakland is currently forced to use two separate vehicles (and therefore staff) for street sweeping – one to sweep and one to give tickets, because of limits on how tickets can be issued. In order to adopt a money-saving model like that in place in Washington DC, where only one vehicle is used and tickets are issued automatically through cameras on the street sweeping vehicles (similar to the process for red-light cameras), State law would also have to be changed.

After the discussion, the Committee asked staff to return to the next meeting on December 15th with their requested revisions and for further discussion. I was sad about the rollback of the parking meter hours in October, but I’m very happy that at least this time, the Council seems committed to a thorough, evidenced-based process for making parking policy changes.

There are no links in this post at the moment due to severe internet connection problems. I will come back and add them when I can, hopefully tonight, maybe Saturday morning.

But sometimes, the City does manage to do things right, and today we get a great example of that.

Downtown nightlife business owners have been clamoring for years to get the street sweeping hours pushed back. Right now, most of downtown gets their streets swept between midnight and 3 AM. Since we have, like, constant street sweeping down here, that means that like half the parking spaces outside all these bars and clubs are just suddenly gone every night at midnight.

This is annoying for patrons arriving late at these businesses, who often have difficultly finding a place to park. This is annoying for owners and employees at these businesses, for the same reason. And it is annoying for patrons who arrive early for a night on the town, and either notice the street sweeping sign and have to cut their night short in order to move their cars in time, or don’t notice the sign and come back from a night on the town to find a street sweeping ticket on their cars.

So what does the City announce yesterday? That they’re going to move the downtown street sweeping hours. Most of the current midnight to 3 AM streets are getting switched to 3 AM to 6 AM street sweeping, exactly like people have been asking for forever. I had to read the press release like six times before I could believe it. Sad, huh? I mean, happy about the street sweeping, but…you know.

Furthermore, the City has apparently learned something from this summer’s parking meter debacle, and actually has a visitor-friendly plan in place to ease the transition:

To avoid frustration during the signage transition period, the City’s parking enforcement staff will provide a grace period from October 26 to November 30. Rather than leaving citations on cars, parking enforcement staff will leave a courtesy flier explaining the changes and encouraging parkers to review the new signage. Following the grade period, street sweeping parking restrictions will be strictly enforced.

Business owners in the area will receive a letter and a flier so they can help alert their patrons to the changes.

I guess the City can learn, after all.