When Your Craft Brewery Turns Parking Into Space for People, Thank Them

Posted on by
Reply
Steel String Raises a Tent

Steel String Raises a Tent

I had the pleasure of drinking my first Steel String Brewery beer several weeks back, outside on a small sliver of sidewalk between the front door of the taproom and the parking row just off the street. I believe I had the Rubber Room Session Ale and it was terrific.

Steel String Brewery Insta-Patio

The Steel String Brewery Insta-Patio

I caught up with a friend I hadn’t seen in a few months, enjoyed a good beer and appreciated the light breeze in the afternoon shade of the building.  It was almost perfect, the lone negative being a few cars pulling in and out right in front of us while we enjoyed our beverages.

A few weeks later, low and behold, Steel String has solved this issue and made a short stretch of South Greensboro Street more civilized, SAFER, and pedestrian friendly in the process.  In short, they’ve filled in the two parking spaces that abut the Wendy’s drive-thru exit with tables and chairs, and at certain times, a tent.

Why has this small change made such a big difference?  Let’s take a look. First, below is a Google Street View orientation to Steel String’s location, which is in a storefront that used to be occupied by the Trading Post used furniture store. Use the mouse to pan left and right in the image below, and you’ll see that the pedestrian conditions deteriorate pretty quickly once you walk from the corner of Main St and S. Greensboro to the first of the two driveway access points in and out of Wendy’s.

After that, while there is a sidewalk between the two Wendy’s driveways, the space in front of Steel String and restaurant Glass Half Full is a continuous row of parking.  Any parked car could pull out at any time, directly back into a pedestrian, and anyone trying to park could pull in off the street at the same time.  This is a pretty unsafe situation for a pedestrian who needs to constantly be looking in multiple directions to avoid getting hit on this stretch of pseudo-sidewalk.


View Larger Map
By turning these parking spaces into seating for their patrons, the restaurant has effectively removed the hazard to the pedestrians described above in both directions.  No cars are backing out of those spaces anymore, and no cars are turning in off of South Greensboro Street.  As for two parking spaces being out of commission, well, the town just bought several dozen spaces across the street and…it’s a bar! Do we really need to encourage people to drive to bars by requiring free parking right in front of the bar?

This type of local, small-scale, but meaningful transformation is in keeping with some of the best ideas springing up from a movement called tactical urbanism, which seeks to make quick changes to streets and neighborhoods to make them more people-friendly. The most well-publicized of these activities is PARKing Day, in which people all over the world convert metered parking spaces to mini-parks, such as in this public radio story from Colorado.

My key point here is this- Steel String has done something to delight their customers and the neighborhood, and inadvertently struck a positive blow for pedestrian safety. Good for them and good for us. If this wasn’t pre-cleared with the Town, let’s hope the official reaction is in keeping with the best Carrboro traditions of simply not freaking out when an informal market asserts itself, or in this case, informal awesome streetside public space asserting itself.

If we want to double down on a good idea, let’s ask Glass Half Full if they want to convert some or all of the next ten spaces to sidewalk dining!

Town of Cary Pursues New Downtown Library with Wake County’s Help

Posted on by
Reply
Downtown Cary by Flickr User Paul J Buda

Downtown Cary by Flickr User Paul J Buda

While this blog’s primary focus is Carrboro, I think it is important to stand up and clap for what looks like a good decision in the making a few miles to our east in Cary. Specifically, the town is working cooperatively with Wake County to put the next iteration of their library in their downtown, and multiple town council members seem to understand the benefits of integrating the library with a broader set of community activities.

Councilman Don Frantz suggested that commercial development wrapped around the parking deck could defray the cost of the public facility.

Bingo! This is one of the most important points that downtown library supporters in Carrboro have been trying to make: a standalone library on county-owned land is a public facility that is only operated using public revenues. A library occupying the floor of a mixed-use building with public and private uses will have some private investment to help with its construction and ongoing operations costs and may even help catalyze further development of a downtown project that is close to “ready to go,” but not quite there yet.

One of the refrains that was repeated earlier this spring in the county staff’s deeply flawed arguments for 1128 Hillsborough Rd as a library site was that there would be opportunities to co-locate the library with a park so that children could play there, and lest anyone believe Cary’s inclinations should validate that idea, they describe the park as follows: “Cary leaders are thinking less of a recreational park than a carefully designed common ground filled with ‘hidden treasures’ and framed by what would be the largest buildings in downtown.”  I think it’s hard to overstate the differences between the type of park Cary is planning downtown and what MLK park on Hillsborough Rd is intended to be.

The article goes on to note that the library would be located adjacent to a hotel. It’s hard not to notice that the library siting decision is clearly linked to economic development in the minds of the town staff and elected officials, and they see opportunity in placing the library downtown.

Cary gets it.  Carrboro gets it.  Wake County gets it.  Orange County? Stay tuned…

Email Question From a Reader: Parking Pricing and Equity

Posted on by
4

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

Posted on by
4

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.

Five Great Reasons to Bulldoze the BCBSNC Building In Chapel Hill

Posted on by
6
Former BCBSNC Headquarters

BCBSNC Headquarters – A Building Its Own Architect Doesn’t Know What Do To With (photo from newsobserver.com)

Today Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC announced they are consolidating their operations in Durham and vacating their dated, modernist solar-cooker-on-cinder-blocks digs in Chapel Hill, because the building is inflexible, expensive to operate, and bad for workers:

Blue Cross officials said the insurer’s distinctive Chapel Hill headquarters – a rhomboid, glass structure designed by the architect A.G. Odell Jr.’s firm – had become more costly to operate than its other buildings and didn’t fit the way employees work today.

The article adds:

Blue Cross expects the move to Durham will ultimately save it more than $2.5 million annually in utilities and operating costs.

“It will be a walkable, flexible environment, and create a community of literally all of our employees,” Borman said.

As for the Chapel Hill headquarters, Blue Cross plans to work with town officials to determine the property’s future, Borman said.

McMurray [the building’s designer] worries what will become of his building.

“It’s sad that they’re leaving it,” he said. “I don’t know what you do with it.”

I visited this building this past year on a day with temperatures in the 60s to low 70s.  The air conditioning was cranked up like it was in the high 80s or 90s outside, which I assume is part of the reason why their utility costs are so high- whoever occupies the building must combat massive solar gain through the roof.  Even the guy who built the building can’t think of a reason to keep using it.

The site layout is as flawed as the building, with curvilinear roads in a mid-century suburban layout that wastes space with both pavement and grass.  But as much as anyone hates the announcement that a major employer is leaving, the silver lining is an opportunity to redevelop over 30 acres, or more than 1.5 million square feet of land. If this dysfunctional building was torn down, what could fit there instead?

For inspiration, here are five other examples of quality urban development that could fit in that area or less:

1. Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic (photo by Flickr user Iurbi)

This picture perfect town is mostly enclosed by a bend in the river that winds through it.  The area within the river bend is about 80% of the size of the BCSBNC site.

Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic

Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic

2. Vernazza, Italy (photo by Flickr user damianocerrone)

Hemmed in by the see and a hill, Vernazza only takes up about 40% of the BCBSNC site, and that includes some of the harbor.

Vernazza, Italy

Vernazza, Italy

3. Downtown Shelburne Falls, MA (photo by Flickr user neonlike)

Picturesque small town in Massachusetts with a waterfall, an abandoned bridge covered with flowers, and a trolley museum – in about 25% of the BCBSNC site.

Shelburne Falls, MA

Shelburne Falls, MA

4. The entire pedestrian-only section of Church St and the 8 surrounding blocks in Burlington, VT. (photo by Flickr user devils4ever)

About 91% of the size of the BCBSNC site.

Church St, Burlington, VT

Church St, Burlington, VT

5. The Downtown Core of Black Mountain, NC (photo by Flickr user Bass Player Keith Hall)

East of Asheville, the downtown of Black Mountain is about 50% the size of the BCBSNC site.

Downtown Black Mountain, NC

Downtown Black Mountain, NC

6. And One Bonus Location: East Franklin St (photo by Flickr user Zannie Gunn)

The space bound by Columbia St, Franklin, Rosemary, and Henderson takes up about 25% of the BCBSNC site.

East Franklin St

East Franklin St

Any of these building patterns are more resilient for changing times than the modernist design of the BCBSNC building, which was always more about making abstract aesthetic statements than being useful to the people using the building or embracing the neighboring parcels in a constructive way.  When was the last time you heard someone say Franklin St “doesn’t support the way people work or live today?”

Build a street grid on this site and populate it with many smaller buildings, public spaces, and much less parking, and Chapel Hill can have a tremendous new urban neighborhood built to last. This is an exciting opportunity. What could you imagine here?

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

Posted on by
1

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.

Measuring Transit Access to Potential Southern Orange County Library Sites

Posted on by
Reply

When considering where to site a public library in Southern Orange County, one of the criteria studied by both town and county staff has been the presence of public transportation, in this case, Chapel Hill Transit bus service.  Evaluating this criteria has been conducted by noting the distance to the nearest bus stop in materials we have seen thus far.  However, transit service is not evenly distributed at every stop and different bus stops provide different levels of access to the rest of the transit network at large.

Fortunately, there is a great tool called Mapnificent that allows you to calculate how far you can travel from a specific point on transit at a certain time of day.  This calculation is completed using the Google Transit data for a community that is publicly available.

Using Mapnificent, I created the following maps for the three county sites that the Carrboro Board of Aldermen sent to the Orange County Board of Commissioners, as well as two other sites that were previously mentioned by Carrboro elected officials: 201 S Greensboro St and 300 E Main St.  Here are the results.  The tool was set to see how many places could reach the library sites within a 15-minute bus ride at 9 am on a weekday.

The light-colored areas can reach the library site within 15 minutes by bus and walking.  The remainder of each map cannot.

1128 Hillsborough Rd – County’s Preferred Site as of March 2013

1128 Hillsborough Rd: 15-Minute Transit Shed

1128 Hillsborough Rd: 15-Minute Transit Shed

As you can see, the site has limited access to most Chapel Hill residents and the most heavily populated parts of Carrboro along Jones Ferry Rd and NC 54 are generally not included in the 15-minute travel zone to this library site.

401 Fidelity St

401 Fidelity St: 15-Minute Transit Shed

401 Fidelity St: 15-Minute Transit Shed

401 Fidelity St fares better, covering the major North-South and East-West roads in Chapel Hll, and getting down to part but not all of Southern Village.  Coverage is barely reaching Carrboro High School.

301 W Main St (Town Hall Site)

301 West Main St: 15-Minute Transit Shed

301 West Main St: 15-Minute Transit Shed

The Carrboro Town Hall site shows expanding coverage through more of Carrboro, as well as improved access to Glen Lennox and other neighborhoods near Eastwood Lake.

201 S Greensboro St (Roberson St Parking Lot Site)

201 South Greensboro St: 15-Minute Transit Shed

201 South Greensboro St: 15-Minute Transit Shed

Everywhere in Carrboro that has bus service can reach this site in less than 15 minutes by bus. In Chapel Hill, residents along Eubanks Rd and Ephesus Church Rd can reach the library in 15 minutes by bus.

300 E Main St

300 East Main St: 15-Minute Transit Shed

300 East Main St: 15-Minute Transit Shed

With 300 East Main’s super-central location, now even residents in Durham County have 15-minute or less access by bus to the library.  Luckily for us, if we put the library there, those Durham residents might spend some money with our merchants while they visit.

Obviously, there’s more that goes into library site selection than how easy it is to take the bus there.  But conversations I’ve had in Carrboro suggest that this is an important criteria for many people, not only for environmental and local economy reasons, but also for social justice ones- like making the library as easy to access as possible for households that may not own a car.

The level of transit service to the library cannot be judged simply by “is there or isn’t there a bus stop nearby?”  We also need to look at the amount of network you can reach from that stop, and (perhaps a topic for another post) the level of frequency and hours of service available throughout the day, evening, and weekends.

Chapel Hill News Asks Wrong Questions on Carrboro Parking

Posted on by
2
Roberson St Lot by Flickr User Rubyji

Roberson St Lot by Flickr User Rubyji

In Sunday’s (3/24/2013) Chapel Hill News, the second left-hand editorial expressed concern over parking management for Shelton Station and the recent purchase of the Roberson Street lot by the town. The paper suggests that by buying parking in one part of downtown while considering ways to reduce the demand for parking at Shelton Station in another part of downtown, the Aldermen are acting at cross purposes by pursuing both initiatives.

Is Carrboro Talking Out of Both Sides of Its Mouth on Parking?

This editorial lacks context in a few places, and it is worth unpacking them one at a time.

Carrboro’s thoughtful development has made it one of the Triangle’s most livable and entertaining towns.

But the town can’t have it both ways.

Let’s start here.  The town is not having anything “both ways.” As the piece goes on, it seems to portray the issue as if asking Shelton Station’s developers to reduce the amount of proposed parking to be NEWLY BUILT onsite is somehow a REDUCTION in parking downtown while the Town purchasing parking that ALREADY EXISTS and is being used today is an EXPANSION of parking. To clear things up, Shelton Station will definitely add some amount of parking to downtown; how much has yet to be determined.  The purchase of the Roberson St lot does not add a single parking space to downtown.  It moves the control of the property’s destiny from the private sector to the public sector.

Is Shelton Station Significantly Out of Step with Town Parking Requirements, and Is That a Problem?  Or an Opportunity?

The editorial goes on:

As proposed, Shelton Station would have 170 parking spaces – fewer than the town requires.

This is partially true- the town has base-level requirements for various uses, and within certain parts of town, mostly close to downtown, developers can take reductions in parking based on the assumptions that some uses will share parking.  The developers have arrived at the 170 spaces listed above by accurately applying the shared parking reduction formulas of the town to the base parking requirements.

However, this only matters if the parking requirements make any sense, and in the United States, generally, they don’t. What’s wrong with parking requirements, particularly those from the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE), which the Town of Carrboro uses? Fortunately, Donald Shoup, the pre-eminent expert on parking in the US, and perhaps the world, has done the heavy lifting for us.

From Shoup’s landmark paper, “The Trouble With Minimum Parking Requirements”:

Where do minimum parking requirements come from? No one knows. The “bible” of land use planning, F. Stuart Chapin’s Urban Land Use Planning, does not mention parking requirements in any of its four editions.1 The leading textbooks on urban transportation planning also do not mention parking requirements. This silence suggests that planning academics have not seriously considered or even noticed the topic. This academic neglect has not prevented practicing planners from setting parking requirements for every conceivable land use. Fig. 1 shows a small selection of the myriad land uses for which planners have set specific parking requirements.

Without training or research, urban planners know exactly how many parking spaces to require for bingo parlors, junkyards, pet cemeteries, rifle ranges, slaughterhouses, and every other land use. Richard Willson (1996) surveyed planning directors in 144 cities to learn how they set parking requirements. The two most frequently cited methods were “survey nearby cities” and “consult Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) handbooks”. Both strategies cause serious problems.

Shoup goes on to point out that the “survey other cities” approach often leads to the repetition of mistakes of other communities.  Carrboro is particularly susceptible to making this type of mistake because very few towns Carrboro’s size possess a level of transit service or cycling usage anything like ours.

Carrboro does, however, use on the handbooks of the Institute of Transportation Engineers in its analysis of how much parking certain uses require in town.  All of the italicized quote below is Shoup’s commentary except for the section in blue, which is a direct quote from the ITE Parking Generation manual:

To base parking requirements on more objective data, planners consult Parking Generation, published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers. For each land use, this publication reports the “parking generation rate”, defined as the peak parking occupancy observed in surveys by transportation engineers.

A vast majority of the data… is derived from suburban developments with little or no significant transit ridership… The ideal site for obtaining reliable parking generation data would… contain ample, convenient parking facilities for the exclusive use of the traffic generated by the site… The objective of the survey is to count the number of vehicles parked at the time of peak parking demand (Institute of Transportation Engineers, 1987a, vii±xv, bold added by Shoup).

The ITE summarizes the survey results and reports the average peak parking occupancy observed at each land use as the parking generation rate for that land use. Half of the 101 reported parking generation rates are based on four or fewer surveys of parking occupancy, and 22% of the parking generation rates are based on a single survey. Because parking is free for 99% of all automobile trips in the United States, parking must be free at most of the ITE survey sites. Parking generation rates therefore typically measure the peak demand for parking observed in a few surveys conducted at suburban sites that o€versample free parking and lack public transit. Urban planners who use these parking generation rates to set minimum parking requirements are making a big mistake.

So what does a page out of the ITE Parking Generation handbook look like? Anybody familiar with statistics and regression analysis who has not seen ITE parking math before is in for a treat. Check out this scatterplot- click to enlarge:

ITE Parking Manual

This is a recommended equation for calculating parking for a fast food restaurant in the ITE Parking Generation Manual, based on the thousands of square feet of leasable space in a restaurant.  It has a R-squared value of 0.038. Put another way, the ITE gives urban planners a chart and equation to forecast the peak demand for parking at a certain type of restaurant in which they admit that over 96% of the variables that explain variation in peak parking demand are not captured by the chart or the equation. I’m ignoring the fact that they have 18 observations and that my grad school faculty said never to conduct regression analysis with less than 30 data points.

The bottom line is that with these equations and 3-decimal point numbers, the ITE manuals look like highly scientific documents, when in fact they are at best alchemy conjured to replicate conditions for single-use buildings that contain all their parking on one site, in places where that is a wise strategy because land is not terribly valuable.  They contain a value judgment that everyday parking should be sized to meet peak demand, which is the philosophy that brings us massive fields of parking for Thanksgiving Day shoppers that sit mostly empty 315+ days per year outside big box stores. These types of analyses were never meant to work in downtowns, and even as a first step prior to shared parking reductions like that which has been contemplated in the Shelton Station application, we should put limited stock in them.

Anyone seeking an informative and entertaining read on the folly of minimum parking requirements should read Dr. Shoup’s entire paper here (PDF 324k). It’s not a long read and there are many graphics. The first 7 pages lay out most of the problems quite well.

Returning to the Chapel Hill News editorial, the piece concludes:

The aldermen may be right to relax the parking requirements for Shelton Station. But if they’re wrong those cars are going to have to park somewhere. Before the project comes back, they may want to figure out just how much parking downtown really needs.

This is not necessarily true.  Those cars might not have to park somewhere.  What the CH News staff is missing here is that downtown attracts PEOPLE first, and also, as a secondary derived consequence of attracting PEOPLE, also attracts VEHICLES, which include:

  • BIKES
  • BUSES
  • FOOTWEAR
  • SCOOTERS
  • WAGONS
  • STROLLERS
  • and yes, CARS

 

Travel behavior surveys from around the country and the UNC campus show that most people, when living in a community that provides transportation choices, use several different modes in any given week.  You might drive to work but walk to the Farmers’ Market on Saturdays.  You might take the bus to UNC for work but drive to the movies with friends.  (you might consider taking the bus home from the movies if it ran later, too)

The key point is that people are reasonably smart and if they want to come to downtown Carrboro, and we give them choices, and encourage them to make choices that keep the downtown less congested and allow more access for others to do the same, then many of them will figure out other ways to get downtown than get in a car.  This already happens thousands of times a day, every day- in downtown Carrboro. Some of them will still drive, and that’s fine as long as we don’t do things that makes downtown less vibrant to ensure they have a perpetual supply of free spaces.

If We Shouldn’t Trust ITE Manuals or Other Communities’ Unscientific Standards, How Should We Evaluate What the “Right” Amount of Parking is for Development, Particularly Downtown?

First, we should realize that there is no bureau of Parking Weights and Measures coming to sue us/yell at us/etc if we make unorthodox choices.  We’re on our own, and that’s good.

Second, we should discuss parking policy through the prism of our goals. Vision 2020 aims to double commercial space downtown.  Space for parking competes directly with that goal, which is why we need to focus on providing ACCESS to downtown rather than parking.  I wrote a column on Orangepolitics on this subject five years ago that I think still applies well today. Access will require improving our environmentally friendly mode access to downtown, and probably involves eventually putting a market price on parking downtown.

Third, we should conduct research on how people get to businesses in downtown Carrboro. What the exact percentage is, I’m not sure- but the percentage of people arriving at Weaver Street Market to shop on foot, by bike, and by bus is surely very, very, different than your standard grocery store.

Fourth, we need to recognize that the fragmented parking landscape of downtown with many owners, all trying to reserve parking for their own customers, contributes to congestion and air pollution when people drive from lot A across the street to lot B to avoid triggering a towing policy, even though the individual moving their car across the street is the mutual customer of two downtown businesses.

When Dan Burden visited in 2001, he recommended that we figure out how to get more shared parking arrangements in downtown.  With the exception of Fitch Lumber allowing Weaver Street Market customers to park there for Thursday night and Sunday morning events, I don’t think this has really happened in any tangible way in downtown.

Back to Shelton Station

This last point is where unbundling parking comes in, and remains a key variable for Shelton Station. Technology has improved a lot over the last ten years and may offer us an opportunity to create “virtually shared” parking in town.  If Shelton Station is approved with the 170 spaces that the shared parking portions of the Town parking rules allow, or even some lower number of spaces, then if there is a carsharing vehicle onsite, renting apartments with unbundled parking will maximize the chance of the Shelton Station lot having capacity because lower-car ownership households will have an incentive to rent there that is not present elsewhere in town.

If after unbundling, Shelton Station developers find they have seven empty spaces pretty much all the time, then it would be great if they could put those seven spaces into a “shared parking pool” for downtown.  We could call the system, you guessed it — “CarrPark.”

These spaces would have a special sign letting people know that while most of the Shelton Station property was reserved for residents and businesses on site, that these seven spaces could be used by anyone WILLING TO PAY the market rate for that parking space at that time of day and day of the week.  Surely at some times of the week, that price would likely be zero, but at others, there would be a per-hour charge that would be adjusted by time of day to make sure that Shelton Station’s shared spaces were priced to be 85% full and 15% empty all the time.

Why would any developer do this?  Easy- they could keep any revenue from the spaces after the costs of registering those seven spaces in the CarrPark system were accounted for. Over time, a network of CarrPark parking spaces would be created downtown, on both public and private lots.  The town could put its public lots into the CarrPark system and build the computerized backend, which would include sensors that share real-time information on whether or not a parking space is empty. Visitors to downtown could check a real-time information app before they drove into town to see which lots had the most availability, and what their price per hour is.

This approach would allow incremental changes, one parking space at a time, to yield genuinely shared parking in downtown Carrboro across multiple public and private lots, without necessitating complicated land swaps among parking space owners.

While an electronic shared parking “CarrPark” system is obviously a longer-term idea to discuss for the community, the key point for projects like Shelton Station which will reach the Aldermen’s table soon is this — there are a lot of parking innovation tools we could deploy to make downtown Carrboro even more lovely for pedestrians while making it a lot more convenient to park downtown.

All of them are likely to work better if Shelton Station rents apartments and parking spaces to residents separately in an Unbundled fashion.

The other stuff can come later; but this is a great time to try Unbundling. I hope we can see this happen through a condition in the use permit for the site, or some other appropriate mechanism the town can come up with.