Category Archives: Pricing

Carrboro to Charge for 21% of Downtown Parking Spaces: 79% to Remain Free

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Downtown Carrboro has over 3,600 parking spaces. The Town owns roughly 700 public spaces, and this week the town released plans to begin charging for parking in those public spaces.

The remaining 79% of downtown parking spaces (around 2,900 spaces) are held by private businesses, such as Carr Mill Mall. Nothing about those private parking spaces is changing as part of this plan.

Why is Carrboro planning to charge for parking in public spaces? (Short Version)

Two separate parking studies (in 2017 and 2022) have found that there are many people parking in public lots downtown for 6 or more hours. Some of them then take the J or CW bus to campus and spend no money downtown. In other cases, downtown employees wind up parking in spaces close to their employer, and inadvertently make it harder for customers to reach their business. These long stays in parking spaces reduce traffic for downtown businesses by locking up parking spaces for most of the day.

We’re also a community that has adopted a Comprehensive Plan called Carrboro Connects that has Climate Action as one of its two pillars. Parking pricing is one of the proven incentives to encourage individuals to consider using public transportation, biking, walking, or carpooling to make a trip instead of driving alone, and this helps reduce carbon emissions in our community.

What are the details of the proposal?

The current plan presumes:

  • Charging for parking in all publicly owned spaces downtown except for designated handicapped parking spaces.
  • The first 30 minutes in any space would be free so that pop-in, pop-out visits which still turn over spaces quickly would cost nothing.
  • The standard hourly cost would be $1.50 per hour
  • The maximum parking time allowed would be two hours
  • Signs will be displayed at the entrance and within each designated paid parking lot or series of on-street parking spaces, indicating this is a Paid Parking Lot/Space (as applicable), maximum parking duration, paid parking rate, and payment instructions.
  • Discounts of fifty (50) percent will be provided to low-income Carrboro residents who meet certain criteria
  • Signs will be displayed at the entrance and within each designated paid parking lot or series of on-street parking spaces, indicating this is a Paid Parking Lot/Space (as applicable), maximum parking duration, paid parking rate, and payment instructions.
  • Discounts of fifty (50) percent will be provided to low-income Carrboro residents who meet certain criteria
  • Fines for violations will be $20 for the first violation and $50 for subsequent violations

Registration and/or payment for parking spaces shall be required immediately upon parking via one of the following methods:

  • Mobile App: download and utilize the designated mobile app for the Town of Carrboro paid parking system; or
  • Text Messaging: send a text message to the designated phone number with the unique identifier displayed on the parking space signage; or
  • Phone: call the designated phone number and follow the automated instructions to pay for parking using a credit or debit card.

Will people still be able to come to downtown Carrboro without paying to park?

YES!

  1. Changing the time of a trip to downtown. While not currently listed as part of the proposal, it’s likely that the parking charges will be active for PART BUT NOT ALL OF THE DAY. So if parking charges are in place from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and you come downtown at 6:01 PM, you can park in any public lot for free.
  2. Parking in one of the private lots downtown that will still be free. Remember, 79% of parking in downtown Carrboro will still be free! If you park in the lot for Carr Mill Mall, for Grey Squirrel/Amante Pizza/Cats Cradle, those spaces will still be free. But be aware that some businesses downtown, particularly Carr Mill, engage in aggressive towing if you park on their lot and go to another business.
  3. Make a short visit! If you need to use a public space to pick up take-out from Spotted Dog, just park for less than 30 minutes, and the visit is free!
  4. If Sundays are free (not clear yet, to be determined by Town Council), park downtown on Sunday!
  5. Choose another transportation mode! The Chapel Hill Transit J Route and CW Route provide all day service to downtown Carrboro, and there is peak hour service on the Chapel Hill Transit F Route and the GoTriangle 405 Route. Biking may also work for those who live within 2 to 3 miles of downtown.

Patrick, you’re a parking nerd. Is there anything you would change about this plan?

Largely, this plan is well-conceived, and the Town deserves credit for establishing an equitable parking charge component for low-income residents. This is what walking the talk on equity looks like.

But I propose two key adjustments to the plan.

Adjustment A: Allow up to Four Hours of Parking With Higher Costs Per Hour

Currently, the planned ordinance has a fee structure that appears to be:

Current Carrboro Parking Charge Plan
0 to 30 MinutesFREE
31 to 60 Minutes$1.50 total
61 to 120 Minutes$3.00 total
More than 120 Minutes Violation & Fine – $20

I propose the following as an alternative:

Alternative Carrboro Parking Charge Plan
0 to 30 MinutesFREE
31 to 60 Minutes$1.50 total
61 to 120 Minutes$3.00 total
121 to 180 Minutes$6.00 total
181 to 240 Minutes$14.00 total
More than 240 Minutes Violation & Fine – $20

In the Alternative table, hour 1 and hour 2 both cost $1.50 for each hour. So if you stay under two hours, you pay $3.00. But if you stay longer, your impact to downtown businesses by not turning over the space increases, and so your cost for hour 3 is $3.00 just for that hour. And if you stay for hour 4, that one hour costs another $8.00, bringing the total cost for 181 to 240 minutes of parking to $14.00.

This gives people more flexibility in how they spend time downtown without triggering a $20 ticket quickly, but uses pricing to discourage park and ride to campus and employee parking in public spaces.

Adjustment B: Use The Alternate Pricing for Lots in the Core of Downtown, But Discount the Price of Less Convenient “Tier 2” Lots

Several lots that are little further away from the core of downtown may be able to be priced at a lower rate to reflect that they are a longer walk and less convenient from most downtown activities. This “Tier 2” of lots could include:

  • Town Hall Lots
  • Laurel Ave Lots
  • Community Worx Lot
  • Weaver St Lot
  • Fitch Warehouse Lot

In Tier 2 lots, parking would cost 2/3rds of what it costs in CORE lots. ($1.00 per hour for the first two hours, and the same discount in hours 3 and 4 in the Alternative Charge Plan above)

The map below shows the proposed CORE lots in green dots and the proposed TIER 2 lots in yellow.

I think there are some other questions about the Tier 2 lots that include – do we even need to charge in them on Saturdays? Other than the Farmers Market hours, those lots are very lightly used on weekends except during special events. Do we charge for Town Hall lots like they are Core lots during the Farmers’ Market, then not charge afterwards?

There’s always a balance between tuning parking policy as closely as possible to demand at various times of day, and having a system that is easy to understand. So maybe the CORE lots charge Monday through Saturday and the Tier 2 lots charge Monday through Friday. Fortunately we have a Town Council to help us work through these questions!

Is there anything else we need to be thinking about?

Yes. Employee access to downtown, in which parking is one of several strategies to reduce the chance that employees are negatively affected financially by the changes. Here are a few things worth thinking about:

  • Raleigh has subsidized e-bike purchases for residents. Can we do the same for downtown employees earning less than $20 per hour?
  • GoTriangle is returning fares to the 405 in July 2024. Can the town use some of the parking revenue to partially subsidize monthly GoTriangle passes for downtown employees?
  • South Green is currently not fully leased out. There is some parking capacity that the Town may be able to lease for town employees who could park there and then either walk up to downtown or take the J bus from the side of the roundabout.
  • It’s also worth considering if employee permits could be made available for downtown properties that have under 50 employees. Larger employers will have greater ability to solve for their employees, so focusing our efforts here could help. At the same time, it’s a balance – we want to make sure that as we issue permits for workers, it does not overwhelm capacity and fill lots. Maybe some of the Tier 2 lots could be prioritized for downtown workers?

Anyway – there’s some thinking to do here.

Why is Carrboro planning to charge for parking in public spaces? (Long, Detailed Version)

1. A downtown business district thrives on ACCESS – people being able to get to the business district to spend money. Some people walk downtown, others bike, others take the bus, and others drive and park.

2. When people who spend little or no money per hour spent downtown occupy access resources (bike racks, seats on buses, parking spaces) in ways that make it HARDER for shoppers who sustain the district financially to access downtown and spend money, it hurts local businesses and downtown vitality.

3. There are two populations of people whose spending per hour parked downtown is very low or zero: downtown employees, and stealth park-and-riders to UNC, who could be students or employees.

4. The largest employer in downtown, Carr Mill, has significant parking capacity to accommodate most or even all of its employees. Carr Mill practices extreme vigilance in preventing its employees from parking in the primary Carr Mill lots adjacent to WSM, Venable, CVS, Harris Teeter, etc. (Seriously, ask the WSM cashiers. Carr Mill has towed WSM employees with 15-20 years of service!)

5. At the same time, Carr Mill practices ZERO vigilance in encouraging its employees to use the lot that is free to them. People being people, having a choice between a free short walk to work and a free longer walk to work, choose the shorter walk from the Armadillo lot, etc. This behavior reduces the availability of an access resource (public parking spaces where you don’t get towed) to shoppers who sustain the business district.

6. While Carr Mill is the biggest issue here due to the number of employees onsite and their mismanagement of their own parking facilities, other downtown employees do the same. I’ve seen Century Center employees park across the street and walk in with brown bag lunches. That’s a town employee taking up a parking space for 8 hours, eating at their desk, and removing 8 hours of parking access in one of the best located lots in town.

7. UNC students and employees who have a choice of paying to park at Chapel Hill Transit lots on the edge of the two towns and taking longer bus rides to campus choose to drive to downtown Carrboro, pay nothing to park, and take a shorter J bus ride to campus, also removing parking spaces from the shoppers who sustain the business district.

8. While making rational choices for themselves, downtown employees and UNC students/staff are imposing costs on downtown businesses by reducing ACCESS for their customers.

9. Charging for public lots over a certain number of minutes will shift Carr Mill employees who work longer shifts to the Carr Mill lot, especially at the Yaggy/Armadillo Grill lot. Would you walk one block further to save $8 to $20 per day? Most anyone would.

10. What about UNC students? Park and ride to campus on the CM bus is still a pretty quick trip, but it’s $2/day or $20/month from the University Lake/Jones Ferry park and ride. But $2/day is much cheaper than $1.50/hour. So yes, people will make that switch. Addressing this stealth park-and-ride to campus behavior is important. I see calls from individuals opposed to parking pricing say that we should just do more to work with downtown businesses. First, the Town has tried, for over a decade, to do this, and not much has changed. But more importantly, as long as public parking is free, downtown Carrboro will remain the cheapest and best park and ride to the UNC Campus.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, on climate – we’re about to enter several days under a deadly HEAT DOME all across the east coast, and we have a forecast for the most active hurricane season ever. I was going to write something here but Elyse Keefe already made the perfect comment on this topic the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chat Facebook group, so read what she has to say:

Take the Town Survey and Share Your Thoughts

In closing, the Town has a survey page where you can provide input here:

https://www.carrboronc.gov/3008/Paid-Public-Parking-Ordinance

Share your views, particularly on things like hours and days of the week when the charge should be in place, and if you think it’s better to have one price everywhere for simplicity, or if having two or more tiers to give people who are willing to walk further lower parking costs is more valuable.

Development at 203 S Greensboro Needs Less Parking, More Startup Space to Complement Library

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On September 19, the Carrboro Board of Aldermen will be discussing a proposal to redevelop 203 S. Greensboro St into the Southern Orange County library and several other public uses for Town of Carrboro departments.The current plan significantly over-provides parking and under-supplies useful commercial space in a downtown whose own recent parking study found that there are over 1,280 unused parking spaces in downtown Carrboro (click here, see page 9 of PDF) at virtually all times of day, 365 days a year.

Before moving forward with this plan, the Board of Aldermen should modify the project as follows:

  1. Reduce the overall parking program to 150 spaces, using only the below ground and 1st levels for parking.
  2. Add a minimum of 8,400 square feet to the project on the upper floors that would be leased to private, taxpaying uses
  3. Explore if building more sq footage brings cost per square foot down, especially if building full, flat floors across floors three and four
  4. Pursue a partnership with American Underground to fill some of the space with startups, and/or use a commercial broker to lease the space
  5. Allocate the 150 parking spaces as follows:
    1. 20 spaces for use by Town (all departments combined)
    2. 130 public spaces (can be used by library patrons, artscenter, town workers, etc as long as they follow parking rules)
  6. Price the parking in the deck to keep 15% of public spaces free at all times, adjusting the price by time of day according to demand. If the deck can have 15% of spaces free without charging at some time of day, parking should be free in that time period.

Why The Aldermen Should Take These Steps

Let’s unpack these moves one by one.

1. Reduce parking to 150 spaces. Here’s the ground floor of the proposed building. South Greensboro Street is to the left, Open Eye Cafe is be directly above the building.  The ground floor of our new signature Town building would be a 14,000-odd square foot library and 19,000 or so square feet of parking. As you go up, the pattern remains this way- about 33,000 sq feet of development of which 58% is parking and 42% is everything else. The below ground floor is 80% parking. This is just too much. If you look at the total program proposed, it comes out to 5.4 spaces per 1000 gross square feet (GSF) of building. To put this in perspective, malls and big box stores generally provide 4 spaces per 1000 GSF.  After the administration in Washington signaled its intent to pull out of the Paris Climate accords, Carrboro put green lights up on Town Hall to signal its commitment to climate action. If we are going to build more parking for our public buildings than Southpoint Mall builds for its shoppers, then I would suggest we take those green lights down and stop pretending we’re committed to fighting climate change. A lot of communities don’t even have parking requirements downtown anymore (i.e. Durham) because they are working to help people use more sustainable travel modes by not subsidizing auto usage.

Library Parking Ground Floor

14,390 square ft of Library, 19,000 square feet of parking!

2. If we took out two levels of the parking deck, according to the cost per square foot and cost per space of parking for the Town in the June 20th presentation, we could add 8,400 square feet of space and pay the same amount to build the building as if we built 55,000 square feet and two more levels of parking. However, we would have more space to lease that would hopefully bring a return on investment to the Town over the years.

3. The cost of this building is projected at $250 per square foot. I am not sure if this is high, but the irregular shape of each floor to wrap around the parking deck may be driving the cost up. The Board should seek advice from Jim Spencer, the architect, on whether having more conventional floor plates on the third and fourth floor in lieu of parking would bring the overall cost per square foot down. If so, then the Town could consider even more square footage that could be rented to the private sector.

4. Pursue a partnership with American Underground. For those who don’t know, American Underground is the wildly successful startup incubator in the basement of the American Tobacco Campus in Durham which has since expanded to two more buildings in Durham and one location in Raleigh. Now that Carrboro has direct bus connections to Durham with stop one block from 203 S Greensboro and one block from American Underground(AU), it’s a great time to leverage a lot of the common cultural affinity between Carrboro and Durham and see if AU is interested in establishing a “Western Outpost” for their ecosystem in Carrboro. We may be able to offer less costly expansion than the increasingly expensive office space market in Downtown Durham, while still offering many of the amenities that both downtowns share.

5. Allocate the 150 spaces as follows: 10 for town employees, 140 public spaces. The current proposal has 30 spaces for Parks and Rec. If the Town wants to get businesses in downtown Carrboro to get their employees to stop using up public parking that visitors and customers could use, they should lead by example. Last year, a delegation from Chapel Hill and Carrboro visited a very successful mixed use project in Boulder, Colorado that had multiple users using one parking garage called Boulder Junction.

Boulder Junction in Boulder, CO has its parking Shared, Managed, Unbundled and Paid

Boulder Junction’s parking operates on four principles: it is shared, managed, unbundled, and paid. “Shared” means that any person can use any space; there’s no “parking for XYZ business only” signage. “Managed” means that there is a strategy for how the parking is to be used, and an entity providing policy and enforcement to ensure the strategy is carried out. (in this case, the city of Boulder) “Unbundled” means that if you rent space in the building, you are not automatically allocated a parking space- you must also rent spaces individually as well, whether you rent by the hour, day, week, or month.  Finally, “paid” is relatively obvious. While the Carrboro Parking Study’s chief failure is no mention of the word pricing, the Town actually went ahead and priced the Rosemary Street lot by Carrburritos and Bowbarr recently, so we’ve crossed the Rubicon and now charge for parking in Carrboro. So let’s do it right. Let’s start where we are as a Town, and implement a system that lets the first 2 hours (or 3! or 4! or whatever we decide!) be free, and only thereafter charges the user. This system is deployed in the North Deck at the American Tobacco Campus in Durham, and people can pay using the Parkmobile app. It’s convenient, promotes turnover, prevents park and ride in inappropriate places, and allows for parking to be free as long as it makes sense.

Taking these four principles, a purist approach would put all 150 spaces into this system. But the Town has storage for some departments in the basement, and there are probably some needs for moving equipment in and out of the building for key events that should have those spaces reserved for town staff. But ten spaces should be enough.

Beyond those ten spaces, the Town should be encouraging downtown employees to park on fringe lots and either walking, biking, or busing to the core sites downtown (203 S Greensboro and the Century Center).

On page 20 of the parking study, you can see that VHB documented 151 cars parking for over 7 hours in our “2-hour stay” public lots. VHB estimates that 50 to 60 of these are town employees, and another 90 to 95 belonged to other downtown employees or UNC students stealth park-and-riding to campus.

I’m sure town employees who currently enjoying parking downtown may be disappointed with this recommendation. But hopefully they recognize that if they can park a little further away, they can support vitality for downtown businesses, and get a few more steps in to finish their commutes, or snag a CHT bus from a lot a little further away.

6. Price the deck for 85% occupancy. This is considered a best practice in the parking industry. If you set the price so that 15% of spaces are empty, then you can pretty much guarantee that with people coming and going, you will ALWAYS find a space at your destination. No more circling and hunting for a space. If demand for spaces is such that 15% of spaces are empty even if the price is free, then that’s what you charge – $0. Based on the Carrboro Parking Survey, it appears weekday lunch hours represent the greatest crunch given our current conditions. In this case, the parking at 203 S Greensboro might have a charge at lunchtime, but not earlier or later in the day. We’d have to set up the system and see. That said, once the system is up and running, businesses could opt in, just as they did in Asheville.

If you take these steps together, and only add the 8,400 square feet while reducing to 150 spaces, you still get a parking ratio of 2.4 spaces per 1000 square feet, which is higher than many downtowns like Carrboro require today. That’s a reasonable outcome to transition downtown away from auto dependence and towards greater economic vitality, while also delivering needed Town office space and the library everyone wants to see happen.

It’s time to do parking pricing right, on the Town’s terms, in a strategic way that balances our goals and puts us on a path to unlock the 1,280 spaces that are tied up in 140+ individual lots, while raising money for alternative modes. This worthy project is the place to start that new effort.

If you agree, please let the board know by emailing boa@townofcarrboro.org.

Carrboro Parking Study Gathers Good Data, But We Need to Start Charging for Parking at ONE Lot

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On Tuesday night, the Carrboro Board of Aldermen will take up a resolution to turn the recently completed Carrboro Parking Study into a plan for downtown parking. When they do, they should recommend some additional actions to town staff beyond those in the study.

Those additional actions are:

  • To initiate steps to begin charging for parking at the Rosemary Street lot (on the corner of Rosemary Street and Sunset Drive) as soon as possible, using new parking technology like Asheville already has, with prices that vary according to demand, including the price dropping to FREE when demand will not keep the lot 85% full. A Request for Proposals from parking app/technology vendors may be appropriate.
  • To invite downtown businesses with significant parking capacity and light usage to put some of their private spaces “in play” as part of the public pool of priced spaces. This is also a feature of the Asheville system, which allows businesses to make their spaces public when they are not using them.

 

Why are these actions needed?

There are several good recommendations in the Carrboro parking study conducted by VHB. Those recommendations include making parking signage consistent, and installing Walk Carrboro wayfinding signs to let people know it is a short walk to downtown destinations from less centrally located lots like the Town Hall lot.

The study also clearly states that no new parking needs to be constructed in the next five years because of how underutilized the existing supply is due to so much of it being limited to single use parking within private lots. It’s great that the study made this clear, as it is the most important finding.

However, the primary recommendation, which the VHB staff called out in bold, saying “The significance of this initiative cannot be understated,” – is encouraging shared parking arrangements among downtown businesses. There’s only one problem with this key strategy- it’s been available to us for decades, and basically nothing has happened. There’s nothing about this study that makes it more likely to happen. Will the town Economic Development director spend more of their time trying to establish these agreements? Will the town transportation planner, a position that has just been vacated? Unlikely. Both of those positions have a big purview already.

The town of Carrboro should not waste time trying to play matchmaker between business A and B, or businesses C, D and H. Instead, it should establish a paid parking system that works for public lots that allows individual businesses to add some number of their private spaces to the public system. This expands the number of spaces available to the public without needing to build new public spaces.

But Carrboro Just Isn’t Ready to Charge for Parking!!

I’ve heard this, over and over again, for the 16 years I’ve lived here. But then DC, DW and I went to eat at Al’s Burger Shack last week and saw this:

Yes, Chapel Hill has put in a new parking lot, right next to the Rosemary Street Lot owned by Carrboro.And here’s the kicker:

Yup, Chapel Hill is charging hourly. 3 feet from the free Carrboro lot. Guess how full the Rosemary Carrboro lot is going to be if we don’t put a price on it? Spoiler: VERY. This lot was among the fullest in the data from VHB, but with a new paid lot from Chapel Hill immediately adjacent, everyone who wants to park in that lot will try the Carrboro one first unless we equalize the pricing. This is why moving to a parking pricing program for Carrboro that allows businesses to put spaces into a public pool makes more sense than ever.

It’s time to charge for some of our parking, and provide a system that businesses can join. This is evidence that our downtown is a valuable and cherished place where people enjoy spending time.

 

At Busiest Time of Day, Downtown Carrboro Has Over 2,000 EMPTY Parking Spaces

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Yes, you read that right. There are usually 2,000 (or more!) parking spaces empty at all times in downtown Carrboro. But we don’t have a way to allow private businesses to partner seamlessly with each other and the town to make these spaces available to the public in a way that balances individual lot owner goals and overall access goals for the downtown, so these spaces go unused when they could be more full.

Until we figure out how to address this untapped parking capacity for the benefit of business owners, the Town, and residents, there is absolutely no reason to build another parking space with public money in downtown Carrboro. It represents a massive opportunity “hiding” in plain sight.

In February, the consulting firm hired by the town to conduct the parking study, VHB, reported the following:

  • The Town of Carrboro owns 359 public parking spaces in 3 lots
  • The Town of Carrboro leases 356 public parking spaces in 5 lots
  • Private Property owners control 3,333 private parking spaces in 145 lots
  • Total Downtown Parking = 4,048 parking spaces
  •  Carrboro’s parking supply is 82% private spaces and 18% public spaces

 

Lunch Time is Crunch Time

VHB conducted parking counts and determined that peak usage for parking lots overall occurred between 11 am and 1 pm.

Parking Occupancy In Downtown Carrboro By Time of Day

Parking Occupancy In Downtown Carrboro By Time of Day

 

As you can see, the public parking spaces (the combined blue and red area) are more uniformly full, while the private spaces vary greatly. It’s also worth noting that the town leases or owns 715 parking spaces in total, and these counts never get above 500.  So our public parking system still has capacity at all times of day.

This second chart by VHB shows how much capacity is available in terms of public, leased, and private spaces.

Parking Utilization By Type

Parking Utilization By Type

 

Parking Availability Varies by Block and By Lot

VHB put together two helpful maps showing parking occupancy by block and by lot.  Here it is by block, with publicly owner or leased facilities emphasized. For example, the dark green rectangle to the right of the letters 300 E Main is the parking deck by Hickory Tavern/Hampton Inn. It’s clear that parking, while still having capacity, is most scarce (up to 85% full) in the Carr Mill Mall section in the middle.

Downtown Carrboro Parking Utilization by Block

Downtown Carrboro Parking Utilization by Block

When you break parking availability down by lot, you see much wider variation in how full the lots are.

Downtown Carrboro Parking Supply By Lot- 11 am to 1 pm

Downtown Carrboro Parking Supply By Lot- 11 am to 1 pm

Still, three of the public lots, including those on Laurel and West Weaver St near PNC Bank, are close to half empty or have greater than 50% of their spaces available. Even the large lot just south of Open Eye Cafe shows at least 30% vacancy at lunch time. The small lots by Friendly Barber are tapped out, as is the lot by Carrburritos and Bowbarr on Rosemary. The parking deck also shows at least 30% vacancy.

What The Green Means – Opportunity

But look closely at the green lot in the middle towards the bottom, just a little bit below the “W” in the “E Weaver St” text. I’ve circled that lot in PURPLE. (click the image to make it bigger)

This is the Bank of America Lot. It has 25 regular spaces plus some for people with disabilities. What the parking study is telling us is that at the biggest crunch time for parking, a lunchtime rush hour, when a lot of people come to downtown Carrboro to eat at restaurants, with Tyler’s to the left of it, Acme to the right, there it is – stuck in the middle with at least 15 parking spaces free, ALL the time. The lot surely has signs saying “Parking for Customers only” so nobody parks there unless they’re going to the bank. But the bank clearly has far fewer customers coming by car than their lot can accommodate. In fact, VHB’s analysis tells us that Bank of America could keep the ten parking spaces closest to their door for themselves, and rent out the other 15 for public use- and not ever have a customer come to the bank and not be able to park for free in one of those ten spaces.

So why doesn’t this happen? Simply put, there’s not a system to buy into. This problem is too big for any one business in town to tackle on its own, but if the town set up the infrastructure and technology to make it EASY for Bank of America to release its parking spaces, the barrier for the bank to become a partner would be greatly reduced.  What would such a system look like? It would look something like the system Asheville already has for its public spaces, but would allow businesses to opt in for some portions of their parking lots. I’d call it “CarrPark.” If the town set up a system like the one in the link for its public and leased lots, then opened up invites to businesses, then lots like the Bank of America who clearly have capacity could be invited to join, and even get some revenue for renting their spaces. If Bank of America wanted to be cautious, they could only decide to lease ten spaces to the CarrPark pool at first. That means the public supply would go from 715 to 725. If it worked well, and Bank of America customers were still happy, the bank could consider moving to 15 spaces, and the public supply would go from 725 to 730. See how this works? Incrementally, without having to worry about giving up ALL their parking, business owners could expand the general parking pool, making everyone feel LESS of a parking crunch.

How to Price a “CarrPark” System

Best practices suggest that if you set the price of parking lots to to the lowest price possible that keeps them 85% full, but no more- then people find parking to be easy and convenient. If a parking lot in the CarrPark system is less than 85% full at any time, it’s free! When demand goes up, though- the price rises to help keep the lot convenient. Revenue from the system would cover the cost of operations and provide some revenue to business owners for each space they share as an incentive to participate. Revenue beyond the incentive would be used to fund other access improvements to downtown such as better evening transit service and bike/ped access projects.

Carrboro Parking Meeting June 16th: 5:30 – 7:30 PM, Town Hall

The next meeting on the Carrboro Parking Study will be Thursday, June 16th, at 5:30 PM at Town Hall, and the agenda includes future parking management strategies. I hope to see something like the CarrPark system presented as one of the options. Please attend if you can!

Carrboro Parking Study Needs Your Input Thursday Eve (Feb 11th)

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If you care about having choices in how to get to and enjoy downtown Carrboro, it is very important that you attend the Carrboro Parking Study Kickoff Meeting at Carrboro Elementary school Thursday evening from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

I’ll be there to share a simple message, and I invite you to join me to reinforce it.  That message is:

"THIS STUDY WILL BE MOST SUCCESSFUL IF IT FOCUSES ON A BROAD GOAL OF IMPROVING ***ACCESS FOR PEOPLE*** TO DOWNTOWN CARRBORO, AND CONSIDERS PARKING ONE OF SEVERAL TOOLS TO REACH THAT GOAL."I apologize for going large font on everyone, but really, this is the heart of the matter. People love downtown Carrboro because it is full of life, energy, commerce, culture, food, art, music, protest, you name it. And all of those great things come from PEOPLE. Some of them happen to come downtown in cars, but really, it’s the PEOPLE that make the magic. Cars don’t have wallets and shop in our stores. Cars don’t play in local bands in our venues. Cars don’t wait tables in our restaurants. PEOPLE do. The town staff, fortunately, seem to get this. From a 2013 staff memo sent to the Board of Aldermen:

In, Parking Evaluation, Evaluating Parking Problems, Solutions, Costs, and Benefits, a publication from the Victoria Transport Institute, the author notes, “A problem correctly defined is a problem half solved.” As the Board continues to refine its overall parking objective–from the continuum of creating a greater number of parking spaces, to encouraging more consumers to the downtown, to reducing the number of existing parking spaces, to removing automobiles from the downtown and thereby reducing the Town’s carbon footprint—it may become easier to frame potential policy changes and LUO text amendments.

Citizens need to encourage the Board of Aldermen to continue in this direction described in the staff memo. Here are a few strategic initiatives to consider that could move us in this direction.

  1. The People Who Drive Downtown Most Often (and Stay the Longest) Represent the Biggest Potential Pool of Parking Spaces to Free Up: Employees If we can identify what barriers keep downtown Carrboro employees from coming to downtown by means other than a car, and address those- we can get all those people to work and free up a lot of parking capacity downtown without adding a single new space. The most obvious example here is that we have 33 restaurants and bars downtown, and while most places finish serving dinner in the 9:30 – 10:30 pm range, the bus service back to most in-town neighborhoods has a final trip leaving downtown before 9 pm. Workers may be able to bus in, but needing to drive home also necessitates driving in, and taking a parking space for the entire dinner shift in downtown.
  2. Recognize That Not Every Access Strategy Needs to Be Used by Everyone In Order for Everyone to Experience Better Access The more people with cars who sometimes drive to downtown that we can help try walking or biking downtown, the more parking will be available for folks driving in from places where biking, walking, or using transit are not as easy. On some days, those people who can walk or bike may still drive, but working to make sure walking and bike access is assured for those within a closer distance makes it more likely that parking spaces are open for those coming from further away, or those not on a bus line.
  3. Consider the Power of Many Small Changes Let’s consider a downtown employer with 10 employees, all of whom drive to work every day. Generally speaking, that employer will have a much easier time getting all ten of them to find a way to only drive 4 out of 5 days instead of getting two of them to stop driving downtown altogether. Either approach still reduces this group of ten’s collective demand for downtown parking by 20 percent. I doubt that there is any single strategy that will solve the downtown access issue, but a host of strategies that all temper parking demand by 3% here and 6% there can cumulatively have a big impact.
  4. Identify the Ways That Parking Pricing Is Superior to Aggressive Towing, and Explain Those Benefits to Residents, Businesses, and Visitors If we charge for parking, and do it in a smart, technology-driven way, we get all of these benefits:
  • Gives visitors to downtown more choice in how long they shop
  • Costs taxpayers less to enforce than enforcing free 2-hour parking
  • Prevents all-day Park & Ride Parking to UNC in town lots
  • Makes it possible to find a lot with many open spaces online or by smartphone
  • Makes it more likely that visitors to downtown find a space easily
  • Reduces cruising for parking which leads to increased congestion and emissions downtown
  • Generates potential revenue for improvements that expand bicycle, pedestrian, and bus access to downtown
  • Helps generate revenue for businesses with parking when their business is closed

 

If you want more details about any of the benefits of Parking Performance Pricing, I wrote a detailed post here.

I hope you can attend the meeting Thursday evening- see you there!

ArtsCenter-Kidzu Building: A Compelling Idea That Needs Some Work Before Going Forward

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The Short Take: The Town of Carrboro has been approached by two cherished local non-profits (Kidzu and The ArtsCenter) with a proposal to build a new “Carrboro Arts and Innovation Center” (CAIC) involving town funds from a not-presently-existent revenue stream.  The proposal has several issues that should discourage the Town from moving forward until these challenges can be resolved or greatly improved upon.  These issues are exacerbated by a lack of public policy guidance documents, most notably a Town Comprehensive Plan, that would guide such proposals to be more in sync with community priorities from the outset.

I urge the Carrboro Board of Aldermen to NOT move forward with this proposal at this time, and to step back and ask themselves:

  • Broadly: What can the Town do to better prepare itself for major proposals such as The CAIC and the Lloyd Farm project?  Why is the Town so unprepared to deal with ideas like this?
  • More Narrowly: What pieces of the ArtsCenter proposal are at an inappropriate level of detail (too much?  too little?) to effectively evaluate whether the Town should:
    • Support such a project?
    • Support such a project AND participate in it financially?

 

The Long Take: There are multiple issues to consider with this proposal and I will try to take them on one at a time.

Background on my Point of View

For those who don’t know me who are reading this, I’ve lived in Carrboro for about 15 years, and my interest in the arts is one of the reasons I live here.  I’ve been a performing musician since high school, and have played locally at the Festival for the Eno, Blue Horn Lounge, Cafe Driade, the Carrboro Music Festival, Open Eye Cafe, Johnny’s, The Station, and yes, The ArtsCenter. Our family has patronized concerts, theater events, public meetings and art shows there.  With a small child in our family, we have also recently been members of Kidzu.  I am a supporter of both of these organizations and what they do in the community, both in spirit and as a patron of their activities. I hope that those who have spent time assembling the CAIC proposal will read the remainder of this post while keeping in mind that I am someone who wants to see both The ArtsCenter and Kidzu succeed.

What’s Good – Carrboro, The Arts, and Institutions for Young Families

The exciting part of the proposal is the promise of an expanded ArtsCenter in a town where the populace loves the arts from a participant point of view as much as a concertgoer/theatergoer/galleryhopper point of view. A great space for the arts is in keeping with Carrboro’s strengths and brand as a community.  There’s no doubt that the idea is compelling.  Additionally, Carrboro’s percentage of population under age 10 is almost 16%, so a place like Kidzu also makes sense to be in the community.

However, as we move from the general to the specific, these positives get overwhelmed by details (and in some cases, the lack thereof) that detract from other things residents cherish about Carrboro, most notably its nature as one of the truly walkable communities in North Carolina and the Southeast.

What’s Problematic:

The Architectural Style

To start with the challenges of the proposal, I’m going to focus on what I’ve learned from the media coverage as I have not been able to attend any public forums.  Below are some images that I believe came from the Chapel Hill News.  They show a modernist/postmodernist building that is heavy on glass and steel.  The building has uneven projections from multiple sides, which certainly probably raise the cost of the building over continuous walls in the same space. I assume that the building would not actually have all the text labels on the outside and that those labels are to help explain interior functions.

ArtsCenter Visualization 1

ArtsCenter Visualization 1

 

ArtsCenter Visualization 2

ArtsCenter Visualization 2

First, if the town wants to take on debt to build a building for non-profit organizations, we should have a plan for how the building could be used if those nonprofits fail and cannot use the space as proposed.  I flag this because the track record of re-using modernist buildings is not that good. 

Carrboro’s Town Hall, a former school, has found adaptive re-use, as has Carr Mill.  Meanwhile, the BCBSNC property sits empty because it ignored many timeless building practices for trendy abstract art statement-making.

If the Town is going to build a building, it should build in a style that has a record of attracting new uses when the original ones fail or leave, and we should try to build it without expensive, hard-to-maintain materials and profiles.

The Building’s Orientation to Its Surroundings

I’ve been to DPAC for a show and I walk by there all the time.  It’s a beautiful facility on the inside, and it sounds great.  That said, I don’t know that its interaction with the rest of the city is all that great in Durham.  To be fair, I’m not sure the site of DPAC presented many opportunities for synergy when it was built, but this site has the opportunity to embrace one of Carrboro’s most busy intersections for pedestrian activity. Unfortunately, the design seems to “hide” the CAIC behind two trees and there is no relationship with Main Street, the most important or “A” street on which the property fronts.  Instead, the primary orientation for people walking to and from the entrance is towards the “B” street of lower importance, Roberson Street.  Additionally, nearly the full length of the ArtsCenter’s interface with the block is for drop-off/pick-up for cars.

The present design honors the car first and the pedestrian second. This needs to change, and any project at this location needs to do more to honor Main St and contribute to it as a place.

The Multiple Roles of the Architect

Mr. Szostak is on the board of the ArtsCenter. What happens when the ArtsCenter is pushing for a design element that raises the cost to the Town, and the Town wants to reduce it?  Wouldn’t it be awkward for an architect to fulfill the Town’s (his client’s) wish while upsetting his Board colleagues?  It doesn’t seem fair to ask the architect of a Town building to negotiate that tension.  Also, shouldn’t the Town, if it’s undertaking a signature building project, seek proposals that would include competitive bids for the design work? There’s no doubt Mr. Szostak is a talented architect.  I suspect he’s done many good things for the ArtsCenter board as well.   If this proposal goes forward, the Town should consider how to prevent conflict between the non-profits and itself via the roles of the architect.

Architecture, Decorum, and Placemaking

Former Mayor Mark Chilton once said that Carrboro’s architecture has “a certain humility” to it. I think he was onto something, but I would say it a little differently, perhaps that our architecture has a “common dignity” to it. I think that any new ArtsCenter building would best serve its purpose by contributing to the common dignity of the street scape rather than making a big statement unrelated to the rest of downtown.

Calls for New Revenue Streams

To the extent that any of this proposal relies on new revenue streams, it is hard to ignore that the NCGA has recently taken away the privilege license tax from municipalities and is looking to redistribute some of their sales tax revenue to rural areas.  This is a legislature that also put new limits on sales tax for counties last year.  A realist proposal would not include a component of asking the NCGA for new revenue sources for a municipality.

Collateral from Non-Profits

The proposal suggests that the Town would only move forward if the ArtsCenter or Kidzu could offer some collateral. Realistically, what assets do these organizations have, and what is the value of these assets?

Continued Failure on Parking Policy From the Town

It is extremely painful to see that one of the four key points this agreement suggests that the Town would not move forward without the appropriate parking infrastructure.  Forgetting all the other points I have made, this is more than enough to oppose the entire proposal until we get off of the idea that because we have a new use of any type in our walkable, transit-served downtown we need more (implied: free) PARKING.  During the Carrboro music festival this year, theoretically our biggest visitor event which will DWARF the busiest night at any new ArtsCenter, the deck was not full.  Why on earth would we put public money toward any structured parking (which eats up truly finite economically productive land in the downtown) without pricing the parking we already have?  (which would also bring revenue). Or without stepping up enforcement? (which would bring revenue and reduce predatory towing)

I’ve already hashed out most of the reasons for being smarter about parking in this post.  Please take a look.

How We’re Getting Input On This

I’m also disappointed that what we’re doing to decide how to proceed with this project is to hold a public hearing.  First, let me say that holding a hearing is vastly better than not holding one.  Still, what’s happening is that everyone is debating the merits of this proposal against itself, and not as part of a broader vision for downtown and the community.  It’s the same type of short-term, single-faceted thinking that led the Town to recently consider turning the bike lanes on Fidelty Street into car parking.  It’s almost as if because one idea emerges, we forget everything else we’ve agreed to as goals for the community.

The recent Lloyd Farm meetings with the community highlight some of the same problems. In frustration, one neighbor said to the developer “we’re not supposed to be designing the project for you!” This line brought lots of laughs, but it held a lot of truth.  But I also had sympathy for the developers.  Our zones and our code don’t tell them what we want; many of the ideas in our zoning and codes are decades old and are not made for this moment in our community’s life, but we keep governing off of them.

Of course, with both the CAIC and Lloyd Farm, the missing document that is supposed to manage all these tensions is a comprehensive plan. Carrboro needs one.

Closing

As I finish this piece, there are a lot of pieces of the CAIC proposal that need work.  I hope The ArtsCenter and Kidzu will step up to the challenge and address those issues in a refined proposal to be considered somewhere down the road. I also hope the Town will take a hard look at whether our current policy tools are adequate to deal with Carrboro’s growth in the next twenty years.

Carrboro Town Staff Considers Replacing Fidelity St Bike Lanes with Car Parking

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Carrboro is a progressive town in many ways, but there are a few community characteristics for which the town really stands out- and one of them is Carrboro’s commitment to bicycle infrastructure. Carrboro is currently the only town or city in North Carolina meeting the American Bike League’s “Silver Award” standard and was home to the North Carolina Bike Summit just last year.

That’s why I was quite surprised to peruse Tuesday evening’s Carrboro Board of Aldermen agenda and find the following:

In an effort to better manage the Town’s parking resources, the issue of how to deal with the needs of longer-term parking for business employees arises. Some businesses have requested parking permits from the Town to allow all-day parking for their employees in public lots…The staff has been discussing two options that the Board could exercise in the interim to help with the immediate problem of employee parking.  The first option was discussed at the April 15th meeting and that is for the town to sub-lease out spaces in the Laurel and Weaver Street lots.. A second option that the Board of Aldermen could consider is to use Fidelity Street for permit-only, on-street parking, Monday through Friday 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.  The street could hold an estimated 100 +/- vehicles.  Permits would be issued to Carrboro business owners for use by their employees only.

This is a really bad idea for a lot of reasons that run the gamut from policy substance on bike lanes to policy substance on parking to symbolism to process. Before getting into all of that, though, here is the staff memo statement on the potential impact to the bike lanes on Fidelity St:

Allowing on-street parking on Fidelity Street would impact the bike lanes.  Fidelity is a low traffic volume street and cyclists often utilize the traffic lane due to the width of the road and low traffic volume.  The width of the street also encourages motorist to speed, therefore on-street parking may act as a traffic calming measure.   The Town could paint the bicycle markings in the road, to increase safety.   However, on-street parking does affect the Town’s overall number miles of bike lanes.  Additional signage would be required to direct parking.  The estimated cost of the additional signage is approximately $800.00 and street markings would cost an estimated $5000.  This cost would be offset by the fees of the permits to park.  

I think this is not stating the impacts clearly enough. What I think this paragraph is trying to say is that the proposal to allow on-street parking on Fidelity Street would REMOVE the bike lanes. The comment “The Town could paint the bicycle markings in the road, to increase safety” seems to suggest that after removing the bike lanes, the Town would paint a few sharrows on the street. As one of my colleagues recently tweeted after Streetsblog recapped a poor decision along these lines in Texas:

Let's Make Sure This Never Happens In the TriangleTo avoid making this a very long post, I’m going to try to provide a quick rundown of a few detail-level reasons why replacing bike lanes with parking on Fidelity Street is likely a mistake, and move on to the two major reasons to try to come up with a better idea.

A Half Dozen of Reasons NOT to Remove Bike Lanes from Fidelity Street

  • The Town spent years waiting to repave Main Street with last year’s road diet, completing the “missing link” of bike lane coverage in town, linking facilities on Hillsborough Rd, West Poplar Ave, West Main St past the 605 building, Jones Ferry Rd, and yes, Fidelity Street.  Now that we’ve linked all these facilities together, let’s not undo the linkage!
  • Removing bike lanes from Fidelity Street would be in direct conflict with the Two Guiding Principles (see Chapter 5) of the 2009-adopted Carrboro Bike Plan: “Assure safe and convenient bicycle access to all areas of the Town” AND “Promote bic ycles as a viable and attractive means of transportation.”  Also not to be missed in this chapter is the plainly-stated Implementation Policy: “Provide bicycle facilities along all collector and arterial streets.”
  • Issuing parking permits for Fidelity Street only to employees of Carrboro businesses is more or less the removal of an open, all-resident resource (bike lanes) to provide a closed-benefit resource to a mix of residents and non-residents. (leased parking spaces for employees only)  The likelihood of the town FILLING Fidelity Street with cars is unlikely when the majority of parking in town will remain free AND be closer to all the employers.  Remember, even if only 25% of the spaces are full and the town doesn’t recoup the cost of repaving the street for a several years, the residents still lose their bike lanes.
  • It’s not clear the town has tried any real Transportation Demand Management (TDM) efforts with their own employees to address this issue; the fact that some of the materials in this item talk about Parks/Rec employees parking in the Weaver Street lot and sometimes even the Greensboro St lot suggest that more could be done here. There are at least 100 parking spaces at Wilson Park, which is about a 3-minute bus ride from the Century Center on the F bus.  If the town really wants to promote parking space turnover downtown for local for-profit businesses, then a zero-cost step in the right direction would be encouraging non-law enforcement Town employees who work downtown to park at Wilson Park and take a 3-minute bus ride to and from downtown.  I’m not sure how much parking at McDougle School is fully used during the day, but that is another right-on-a-bus-route location where downtown employees could be encouraged to park.  Either of these approaches expands capacity downtown without dismantling a part of the bicycle network.  Are there any incentives for town employees to carpool or vanpool to Carrboro?  Does the town assist employees with bike purchases up to a certain amount? Maybe the town is doing these things already.  If they’re not, they should try them.
  • Best practices in urban parking management literature often encourage curb pricing to promote short-term (1-3 hour) turnover and move long-term parking to decks.  Carrboro presently encourages short-term parking in its deck and the Fidelity proposal puts long-term parking on a curb. It would be wise to consider if having our incentives flipped from the best practice position makes sense.
  • Random parking supply interventions without an overall strategy today are tomorrow’s grandfathered deals that set bad precedent. Let’s avoid doing these things.

But there are two BIG reasons why NOT to remove bike lanes on Fidelity Street and replace it with parking.

Carrboro Needs to Approach “Parking Problems” as “Access Problems”

The worst thing about this proposal is that it suffers from the “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” syndrome.  The staff text is built on the assumption that since complaints have been lodged about long-term parking for downtown employees, they must be solved by creating new parking spaces. This orientation is part of the problem.  Instead, the questions that need to be asked are:

  1. Can we get some or all of the employees in question downtown without a car?  Yes or no?
  2. Can we do things to convert some of the “no” answers in question 1 to “yes” answers?
  3. Can we better manage parking that already exists, downtown or outside of downtown?

These questions will widen the solution set if pursued in earnest.

But here’s the other big reason to keep bike lanes on Fidelity.

The Future Growth of Cycling in the US (including Carrboro) Depends on the Expansion of Facilities That Don’t Require BRAVERY to Ride On

If we really want to expand bicycling in Carrboro, we have to grapple with the fact that the biggest barrier to this outcome is reducing both real and perceived danger to people riding bikes from cars.  Roger Geller’s excellent piece on the Four Types of Transportation Cyclists breaks down Portland, Oregon’s population into the following groups by their proclivity to bike for transportation (as opposed to recreation) purposes, and puts 60% of Portland’s population into a category he describes as “Interested But Concerned,” which he describes as follows:

About 60% of the population. These residents are curious about bicycling…They like riding a bicycle, remembering back to their youths, or to the ride they took last summer on the Springwater, or in the BridgePedal, or at Sun River, and they would like to ride more. But, they are afraid to ride. They don’t like the cars speeding down their streets. They get nervous thinking about what would happen to them on a bicycle when a driver runs a red light, or guns their cars around them, or passes too closely and too fast.

Geller goes on to emphasize:

No person should have to be “brave” to ride a bicycle; unfortunately, this is a sentiment commonly expressed to those who regularly ride bicycles by those who do not. There are many cities in modern, industrialized nations around the world with a high bicycle mode split. They have achieved these high levels of bicycle use through adherence to various cycling-promoting policies and practices. But, one thing they share in common is they have substantially removed the element of fear associated with bicycling in an urban environment…In these “fearless” cities septuagenarians are able to ride alongside seven-year-olds safely, comfortably, and with confidence throughout the breadth of the cities[1]. Making bicycling a more widespread and mainstream means of transportation in Portland will require substantially addressing concerns about personal safety.

The path to expanding bicycling as a pleasant and convenient choice in Carrboro (and well, most anywhere) is the path that develops infrastructure that is as safe as possible AND feels as safe as possible to people age 7 through 77.  For the “Interested But Concerned” group, bike lanes are significantly better than no bike lanes, and Protected Bike Lanes are better still.  Recent research has found Protected Bike Lanes have significantly increased bicycling where they have been built in several US cities.

Carrboro’s upcoming Jones Ferry Rd project will incorporate a Protected Bike Lane under NC 54 as part of the design.  We need more facilities like these, not fewer.

Right now both the “Interested But Concerned” and more aggressive “Strong and Fearless” riders (see Geller’s typology) both have a choice that meets their needs on Fidelity – bike lanes for the former and riding in traffic for the latter. Removing the bike lanes damages the bike network for the largest groups of users.

So let’s work on access issues for employees who work in downtown Carrboro, and let’s give them choices to get downtown- to free up parking spaces for paying customers at our local businesses.  But let’s not do it at the expense of our award-winning bike network that we’ve worked so hard to build.

Thanks for reading.

Email Question From a Reader: Parking Pricing and Equity

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In response to my last post on why Performance Parking Pricing is better than greater enforcement of 2-hour parking limits, I received an outstanding response from a reader via email.  Here are some key excerpts:

Hey Patrick.  I have been closely following the discussions about parking in Carrboro.  I subscribe to your CityBeautiful21 blog and I have watched all the recent archived video of Board of Aldermen meetings where parking was discussed.
I’m concerned that you have not addressed the impact [of parking pricing] on less wealthy citizens of Carrboro.   Since our bus system is not yet full service, particularly during nights and weekends, even folks who live in southern Carrboro often must drive to downtown…Your assumption that text enabled cell phones or smart phones would be available to most potential parkers is part of this issue.

You may have a solution to this problem but I have not heard a solution discussed. One idea that comes to mind would be a parking decal made available (one per in-town residence) to allow free parking, at least for some duration.  This has the advantage of favoring Carrboro residents since they already pay for development of parking facilities through their property taxes.

If such a decal would undercut the revenue stream needed to support a system like ParkMe, perhaps it could be reserved for citizens in financial need. Well thanks for listening.  I have great hopes that Carrboro will proactively address parking.  I understand that this is a key ingredient to making “small town urban” work well.

First, it’s wonderful to get such thoughtful feedback on a post. There are several good points the reader raises here; let’s take them one by one.

Parking Pricing Affects People of Different Incomes in Different Ways

This may seem patently obvious, but it’s worth being clear about it. Lower-income individuals are more impacted by parking pricing than higher-income individuals, especially if they lack alternative ways to access destinations that have priced parking. Therefore, if we are concerned about treating all citizens equally, then it is reasonable and healthy to ask if adding parking pricing to downtown Carrboro can be done in an equitable manner.

Addressing Equity: Are There Ways to Avoid Paying to Park, or to Pay Less to Park?

First, if parking pricing affects lower-income individuals more than higher-income ones, is there a way for a lower-income individual to avoid paying to park while still coming downtown?

Under Performance Parking Pricing, the answer is a big YES.  Remember the primary principle of Performance Parking Pricing: charge the LOWEST PRICE POSSIBLE that keeps at least 15% of the parking spaces in a group empty and available, INCLUDING ZERO dollars per unit of time.

For those who wish to avoid parking costs downtown, the first strategy is to drive downtown at a time when demand for lots leaves them more than 15% empty even when unpriced, because at those times, low-demand lots should be FREE.  Below is a lot in Chapel Hill that is priced from 8 am to 6 pm on Saturdays, and this is at about 11 am on a Saturday morning.  If this lot were in a Performance Parking Pricing system, it would be a prime candidate to lower the hourly rate, perhaps to zero, on Saturdays around lunchtime.

Underused Chapel Hill Parking Lot

Underused Chapel Hill Parking Lot

But time-shifting of a trip is not the only way to avoid or lower parking costs downtown.  Under a Performance Parking Pricing system, it is likely (and appropriate) that parking prices should vary by lot.  The lot across the street from the Station and Armadillo Grill will surely be fuller most evenings than the West Weaver St and Town Hall lots. Accordingly, if either of these lots have more than a 15% vacancy rate, they should be unpriced, and someone who wishes to avoid a parking charge simply walks a few extra blocks to their destination.

Addressing Equity: Improving Non-Auto Access to Downtown Carrboro

The reader gets at an additional part of the solution to equity concerns when he states:

“Since our bus system is not yet full service, particularly during nights and weekends, even folks who live in southern Carrboro often must drive to downtown…”

He is getting at another issue that we will need to address to improve access to downtown- the fact that bus service to and from downtown Carrboro at night and on the weekends is limited compared to its weekday, rush hour levels of service.  There are a few things we can do to improve this situation that could be the subject of several subsequent blog posts, so I will leave those details to another day.  However, Performance Parking Pricing can bring revenue to the table to help pay for extending transit services later and adding route frequency, or to help invest in safer bike routes into the downtown core.

Our local transit service today is very good for a US system in a medium-sized community.  However, if we want to take it to the next level of success, getting a wider service span across the day to 10:00 or 11:00 pm on most routes would help a lot.  Fortunately, Chapel Hill Transit is already working on this, with the following improvements recommended in the budget for the coming year:

  • Extended weekday evening trips on the CM, CW, D and J bus routes
  • Later trips for the F route
  • Earlier hours for the Saturday JN route
  • Additional Saturday hours for the CM and CW routes

 

Another Advantage for Performance Pricing Parking: More Equitable Than Flat-Rate Parking

What is interesting about the equity question and parking is that having flat-rate parking, such as $1/hour regardless of demand for spaces, takes away the two opportunities for equity above that involve time-shifting or choosing a lower-priced lot. This is another reason to figure out how to start charging for parking in Carrboro under a Performance Parking Pricing format rather than a flat-rate, maximum-hour limited format.

Technology and Equity: Can We Make Performance Pricing Parking Work Without Tripping Over the Digital Divide?

Parking Zone Signage in Asheville

Parking Zone Signage in Asheville

Another issue raised by the reader is whether or not a system that relies heavily on phone technology to pay for parking is exclusionary of lower-income individuals who are less likely to own smartphones.  This is a good question. Fortunately, many of the systems sold by vendors who produce parking technology have recognized this issue, and have worked to create systems that combine pay-by-smartphone apps with pay-by-text solutions, as well as on-street kiosks offering pay-by-credit card and pay-by-cash choices as well.

The sign at the right from Asheville even has a phone number you can call and speak to someone to facilitate payment in case you do not have a smartphone.

Over the long term, the trend towards all phones being smartphones is also likely to eliminate gaps in access and narrow the digital divide. I just checked with my wireless provider’s website and found that smartphones by Apple, Nokia, Samsung, and Blackberry were all available for less than $1.00 with a two-year contract. The chart below on smartphone market penetration by age and income also seems to support that we are headed this way.

Smartphone Use by Age Group and Income

Smartphone Use by Age Group and Income

 

Looking at this chart, it seems like age is a much more powerful predictor of smartphone usage than income.

Is There a Role for Decals Regarding Parking In Downtown Lots?  I Don’t Think So

Finally, the reader asks if having decals for town citizens, either for all citizens or limited by income, that would allow some form of limited free parking– would be an alternative we should consider.  My initial assessment is that the other ways of addressing the equity questions I discuss above are more efficient at providing choice and opportunity in allowing low-income individuals to minimize parking costs, and also minimize the management burden and costs of the town.

The experience in other (UCSD) communities (U of FL) that are in or adjacent to college towns also suggest that with many households moving in and out each year, the distribution of decals to residents creates the opportunity for a black market in parking decals to emerge where local residents who can obtain a permit may actually “rent” it to higher-income individuals or to students who would park downtown for longer periods of time than desired, perhaps to commute to campus.

Given the concerns the Aldermen have voiced regarding park and riders coming to downtown after the pricing of Chapel Hill Transit lots begins in August, this decal approach would seem to be in conflict with strategies designed to manage any spillover effects from Carrboro Plaza / Jones Ferry Rd to downtown.

Bottom Line: Equity Is Possible Under Performance Parking Pricing; The Reader Is Right About Improving Alternatives and Making Sure Payment is Accessible

It was a joy to get such thoughtful feedback on a post.  It encouraged me to think in greater depth about the issue, and to look at it through a prism that many of us hold dear in Carrboro.

I think it is clear that Performance Parking Pricing could be implemented in Carrboro without having serious equity impacts because of the choices it provides in terms of motorists having access to different lots at different times at different prices, that for the near term, will almost certainly be FREE at least part of the time. If some of the revenue from a Performance Parking System could be dedicated to support transit and bike access to downtown from lower-income neighborhoods, then the equity proposition of this program looks even better.

The reader is absolutely correct that we need more alternatives to get to downtown at more hours so that those who have strong financial incentives to avoid parking costs have choices available to them, and that while smartphone technology is great, we need to ensure that there are other ways to pay for parking that don’t require you to own an expensive, latest-model phone. I commend him for putting this topic on the table!

In closing, while I certainly encourage anyone to join the discussion in the comments, I know that others may wish to submit comments by email.  To make that easier, and to avoid spam for me and you, I’ve set up a contact form as part of the site, now available here.

Performance Parking Pricing Is Better For Businesses Than Enforcing Free, Time-Limited Parking

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Coming Soon to Carrboro?

A few weeks back, the Carrboro Aldermen held a discussion about parking, mostly pertaining to downtown.  After some debate, the sense of the Board majority (though not all Board members) was that it is better to encourage aggressive private towing — instead of having anyone pay for public parking at any time.

This is unfortunate, since there is a much better parking management alternative that:

  • Gives visitors to downtown more choice in how long they shop
  • Costs taxpayers less to enforce than enforcing free 2-hour parking
  • Prevents all-day Park & Ride Parking to UNC in town lots
  • Makes it possible to find a lot with many open spaces online or by smartphone
  • Makes it more likely that visitors to downtown find a space easily
  • Reduces cruising for parking which leads to increased congestion and emissions downtown
  • Generates potential revenue for improvements that expand non-auto access to downtown
  • Helps generate revenue for businesses with parking when their business is closed

The alternative I am referring to is called Performance Parking Pricing.

Performance Parking Pricing – How It Works

Performance Parking Pricing starts with the following three principles:

  • The ideal utilization of any group of parking spaces is 80-85% full and 15-20% empty, because this leaves enough spaces to help anyone entering a parking lot, parking deck, or on-street row of spaces to quickly find a space and START SPENDING MONEY at local businesses instead of cruising around looking for a space.
  • You set the price per hour to the lowest price you can charge, INCLUDING FREE — and still have 15-20% of spaces open.
  • If a block of parking spaces is consistently more than 80-85% full in a given time period, you RAISE the hourly price for that time period.  If the block of spaces are consistently less than 80-85% full, you LOWER the hourly price for that time period.

Technology has advanced to make monitoring the number of free spaces in real time quite inexpensive, and text-enabled mobile phones, smartphones, and on-street kiosks make it easy to use.


Benefits of Performance Parking Pricing: For Shoppers

There are many benefits that Performance Parking Pricing has over trying to enforce 2-hour limits on free parking spaces.  Imagine you’ve come to downtown Carrboro to do some shopping and have parked in a public lot.  You shop for about 1.5 hours, and then run into a friend you haven’t seen in a while.  They ask you to get lunch at one of downtown’s sit-down restaurants.  “Sorry, I can’t- I’m going to get towed in 30 minutes unless I move my car.” With a smartphone or single text message, you could extend your parking downtown by one hour and not have to walk back to your car to do so.  You get to enjoy lunch with your friend. And a restaurant gets another customer.

Benefits of Performance Parking Pricing: Customer Turnover for Businesses

With the coming pricing of Chapel Hill Transit Park & Ride lots, town officials are correct to be concerned that downtown public parking lots will be used by commuters to the UNC campus.  Maximum parking time limits during class hours on weekdays can significantly deter park/ride activity, but fewer parking attendants can be deployed since the pricing encourages people to watch their time, and smart sensors can alert parking staff to violators so that tickets can be issued quickly.

Benefits of Performance Parking Pricing: Costs to Taxpayers

Enforcement costs money. A decision to enforce parking rules without adding revenue either adds cost to town budgets, or redirects employees who have other duties at present.  I’m grateful that crime is much less common in Carrboro than other communities. But do we want to take police away from more important duties to enforce two-hour time limits?  If not, the town will likely need to hire new staff.  Mayor Chilton was quoted in a recent WCHL story saying:

“if you mess up so bad that you get a parking ticket in the Town of Carrboro, there is nothing that I can do to help you.”

This suggests that current parking enforcement in Carrboro is somewhere between non-existent and very lax.  I personally do not think I have seen a single parking ticket on a windshield in the twelve years I have lived here.  Inconsistency in enforcement of any rule tends to lead to non-compliance, which means when enforcement begins, more people will be surprised to get ticketed or towed, which means more people will have bad experiences and unmet expectations about visiting downtown. Vigorous enforcement will be needed to break habits and that will not be free to the town budget.

Implementing a parking system like this, of course, also has costs- but pricing brings REVENUE to recoup the cost of the system, and after that point has been passed, the system can generate revenue for the town to improve access to downtown by means other than the private automobile.

Benefits of Performance Parking Pricing: Much Better Than Encouraging Towing

There are lots of reasons to prefer parking pricing over towing. Here are just a few:

  • Outsourcing enforcement to the private sector. The Town can use its regulations to promote turnover in public lots by towing vehicles, but any revenue generated by motorists who violate town rules winds up going to tow companies and not the Town.  With the Town managing pricing, violation fines can be put to public purposes, such as running buses later in the evening on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, making it easier to get downtown without a car in the first place.
  • Towing is generally much more expensive than a parking ticket to a shopper who violates the rules. Chapel Hill has recent experience with some of the towing firms that are likely to “serve” downtown Carrboro that may be instructive, with tow fees reaching up to $250! We don’t want people to monopolize public parking downtown and prevent it from turning over for new customers, and enforcement should send them a signal that they should behave differently.  But a parking ticket is a much better mechanism than towing, and can get the point across without gouging.  There’s a big difference between a $20 ticket and your car is where you left it and a $250 tow fee and you have no idea where your vehicle is, and now you have to pay a cab to take you to a remote lot. Who’s more likely to return to downtown Carrboro to shop: the guy who drove home as planned and mailed in a $20 check to Town Hall, or the guy who had to find his car in the woods at 1 a.m. and fork over $200 cash, after the cab that drove him out to somewhere on NC 54 between here and Graham already left?

Benefits of Performance Parking Pricing: Give Local Businesses a Revenue Opportunity

The Daniel Building on West Weaver Street has a series of businesses that are almost all closed at night, and they have several parking spaces.  Their sign discourages people from parking there who are not visiting those businesses.  That’s their right and this is important during the day for Modern Fossil and others in the building, but generally not at night.  If we had a town-wide parking system, the owners of The Daniel Building spaces could add some or all of their spaces to the Performance Parking Pricing pool, and generate revenue from their idle spaces at night, while also expanding the parking supply for late-evening downtown visitors patronizing Open Eye, Steel String, and Tyler’s.

Benefits of Performance Parking Pricing: Real-Time Parking Information

One of the most frustrating recurring parking problems I face in Carrboro is trying to park somewhere near Carrburritos at dinner time.  You drive over there, and find that the four spots at Carrburritos are full.  So you drive into the Rosemary Lot across the street from BowBarr, and you see a space!  Just as you’re about to pull in, you realize it’s the one wheelchair accessible space in the lot and you turn around and drive out.  As you exit, you pass someone with a hopeful look driving in, who not only saw a space, but sees you leaving, which means they think you vacated the space! Their hopes are similarly dashed moments later, and your hunt for parking continues, as your car continues to emit emissions and add congestion to the street grid.

Among some of the other benefits listed here, a Performance Parking Pricing system would by definition keep track of which lots in the system had spaces available, in REAL TIME.  Many cities have data like this these days using systems like the ParkMe web and smartphone app.

Imagine driving to downtown Carrboro with a map like this that someone in the passenger seat could use as you drove there:

You’d never hunt for parking again because you’d know exactly where to go.

Benefits of Performance Parking Pricing: THERE WILL STILL BE FREE PARKING DOWNTOWN A GOOD DEAL OF THE TIME

Before completely moving on from the map above, notice the price for less than 1.5 hours in Santa Monica: FREE. There are plenty of days and times every week in downtown Carrboro where current lots are not 80% full even at zero cost and (let’s be honest here) pretty much zero enforcement. While adding pricing to high-demand locations at peak times will help fill under-used lots, under a Performance Parking Pricing strategy, lots that remain below 80% occupied at $0/hour stay priced at $0/hour.  Until they go above 80% occupied, when it becomes difficult to guarantee an empty space to the next visitor, they would remain FREE.

Performance Parking Pricing vs More Enforcement of Time-Limited Free Parking: Summary

I recognize that for many people and business owners, the idea of paying for parking in a place where it has always been free represents a big shift in thinking about downtown Carrboro.  But simply stating “we’re not ready to charge for parking” and saying we’re going to ramp up enforcement on two-hour parking limits doesn’t seem to do the two things that I think would bring merchants the most steady stream of customers, which are:

  • making the process of finding parking EASIER for customers at high-demand times
  • establishing a public policy that supports turnover of spaces for commerce

Returning to my Carrburritos example, I’m there enough to know that most people eating there are not staying longer than 1 to 1.5 hours.  Even under strict enforcement of a 2-hour limit, all the challenges at the Rosemary Lot I described will almost certainly persist. The 2008 parking study also found that only about 20% of those parking downtown were staying longer than three hours. How many spaces can we really enforce to turnover if most people leave in under two hours anyhow?  What if the real gain in spaces for businesses occurs by converting 60 minute downtown visits to 30-minute ones? Making the first 30 minutes free and the time after that paid? The first 60 minutes free? If either of these are true, then enforcing a two-hour limit will be a big waste of time.

What if the optimum time for people to stay downtown from a commerce point of view is a little over two hours?  Now the scenario where someone comes downtown to visit one store and then decides to stay longer and get a meal can still get cut short by needing to go move their car, and a local restaurant just lost a customer.  Maybe that’s why Santa Monica has their pricing set the way they do?  Who knows.  Maybe we should ask Town staff to talk to Santa Monica staff.

What I fear an enforcement-only approach means is that a commitment to free parking at all costs is just a guess at what will generate greater parking availability for businesses, and that it will be a costly one in terms of town funds, with no guarantee of actually making more parking available for customers.  Beyond the financial aspect, it also looks like a commitment to continued extra cruising in and out of the Rosemary Lot when Carrburritos is slammed, and the same at the Century Center Lot on Thursday evenings when Weaver Street Market has an event. For a community that prides itself on accolades from the Sierra Club and similar organizations, it’s a commitment to extra greenhouse gas emissions that come from that extra cruising for parking. It’s a commitment to more traffic and congestion than necessary, and more time for people who WANT to spend money at downtown businesses to wait until they get to make a transaction while they hunt for spaces.  Oh, and if they decide they want to stay longer and shop or dine for more than 120 minutes- sorry, they can’t make that choice legally without walking back to a lot and moving their car.

If simply “more enforcement” of two-hour limits is the answer of an alternative policy to pricing, then the Town should at least be clear about how much the Town budget and taxes might increase to pay for this additional enforcement, or detail which other activities by existing town staff in specific departments will be curtailed to redirect their energies towards parking enforcement.

Finally, there should be a clear metric to measure “success” in a greater-enforcement-but-still-free-public-parking environment downtown that doesn’t involve the number of cars ticketed or towed. If the goal is to have a greater number of spaces available at all times for customers patronizing downtown Carrboro businesses, then that’s what we should count.  If anyone can think of a cheap, accurate, statistically viable way to do this without sensors, let me know.

The Future of Parking Is Here, It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed

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I’ve never read William Gibson’s novels, and I am generally unfamiliar with his ideas.  But I like this quote of his:

The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.

This is true to some degree with any matter of human existence that interfaces with technology, and transportation, including parking– is no different.

Our family spent Easter weekend in Asheville, NC. DW grew up there and whenever we visit, we usually spend some time (or lots of time) enjoying all that Asheville’s downtown has to offer. The transformation of downtown into what is perhaps North Carolina’s most vibrant urban environment since the mid-90s is quite remarkable, and we enjoy seeing the changes there when we visit.

Given the amount of time I have spent writing on this blog about parking recently, I was pleasantly surprised to see that at least some elements of the Future of Parking have arrived in Asheville.

Most notably, Asheville has implemented pay-by-phone parking across many (but curiously not all) spaces in downtown.  Here’s how it works:

1. After you find a parking space, you get out of your car and make a choice between putting quarters, nickels and dimes into a conventional parking meter adjacent to your space, or paying for use of the space with your smartphone.  Signage on the street near public parking spaces lets you know what zone you are in.

 

Parking Zone Signage in Asheville

Parking Zone Signage in Asheville

2. Once you know your zone, you can fire up an app on a smartphone, text, or call an operator via phone to pay.  The remainder of the steps below are showing the smartphone procedure.  You look at the space number on the parking meter (in this case, 3) to enter into the software.

Asheville Parking Meter

Asheville Parking Meter, Space 3

3. From here the phone app takes over.  I had downloaded the Passport Parking app and registered my phone and credit card number.  Once you sign in using a pin you designate, you specify the zone (which part of the city) you are renting a space in.

Choosing Your Parking Zone

Choosing Your Parking Zone

4. Next you specify the parking space itself: (I also parked once in space 17, and space 18. I forgot to get a screenshot for space 3, but you get the idea)

Choose Parking Space Screen

Choose Parking Space Screen

5. Finally, you receive a screen where you can select how many hours and minutes you want, which then gives you a summary and your total anticipated parking charge:

Confirm Payment Screen

Confirm Payment Screen

 

You’ll notice that you’re paying $0.25 extra to pay for parking via phone, on top of a base price of $1.25 for 75 minutes, or a quarter for every 15 minutes. Is this surcharge worth it?  Imagine you’re at a restaurant, having a good time with friends, and you realize it’s 3 minutes until the meter runs out, and the restaurant is 5 minutes away on foot.  And it’s raining. Would you rather sprint back to the car to feed the meter $0.50, or reach into your pocket, tap your phone a few times, and extend your parking by 30 minutes for $0.75?

It’s this ability to change your plans on the fly and still avoid a ticket or a backtracking walk across downtown that makes the service worth the extra quarter.

6. Finally, the app even gives you the option to be reminded when you’re getting down to a certain number of minutes so that you know when to start walking back to your car, or to make the extension payment and keep on doing what you were doing.

Parking Countdown

Parking Countdown

Notice the option to Extend your parking is at the bottom left, and Validation (I did not get to try this in Asheville) is at the right.

The system emails or texts you a receipt if you like, so if you’re on business and need to turn such things in, it’s easy to do so.  All in all, I found it very convenient, and the system did what it was supposed to do.

Opportunities for Improvement

Asheville could make this system a little better with a few simple improvements.

  • First, the meter poles are labeled, but many of the meter poles manage parking for two spaces.  There’s some confusion on the two-space poles which space number you should enter into the system. It’s less confusing for the user if every space on the street is individually marked.
  • Market pricing of spaces.  It was clear driving around that some spaces were in much greater demand, yet the price was uniform as far as I could tell across most zones.  Raising prices on busier blocks and lowering them on less-busy blocks would lead to better utilization on the further-away blocks and also make more spaces available on the best blocks.
  • Finally, I’m not sure what the significance of the Zone numbers were.  I expected zones to change by block, but it seemed like two-thirds of downtown was in Zone 48, and the rest of the zones seemed haphazard.  I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to be telling me. Perhaps using more zones would have made things clearer; perhaps not.

The Bottom Line

As I mentioned above, the future of parking is already arriving piecemeal in North Carolina, though it has not yet reached Carrboro. Asheville is using pay-by-smartphone technology effectively, but has not improved its hardware (meters and labels) or policy (pricing/rates) to keep up with its advanced software.  Hopefully those improvements will come soon.

The type of advanced parking system I think we ultimately will need in Carrboro involves several improvements over the status quo, and the type of software implementation shown here, already working well in Asheville, is one element of that advanced parking system.