Category Archives: Parking

City of Peoria, Parking

City plans to continue subsidizing downtown parking

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From this week’s Issues Update:

The City owns and operates several parking lots on the Peoria Riverfront. These are the Michel East and West Lots, Edgewater Lot, and Liberty Lot, which are collectively known as the MEL Parking Lots. These lots are controlled by means of three sets of ticket booths and gates, which are accessed from Water Street. Since 2006, the MEL Lots have been posted two?hour free parking in an effort to promote short?term parking for customer use. Parking meters and permits are available for long?term parkers. During this time, the ticket booths have been vacant and the gates lifted. Additionally, complaints have been received that the ticket booths sometimes confuse new visitors trying to park in the lots.

These facilities had been left in place in case the City would again decide to charge hourly rates in these lots. However, it is unlikely that the City would choose to provide manned ticket booths for this area. A more viable solution would be to install an unmanned area parking system to control these lots. Since these facilities no longer serve a purpose, they should be removed to create better access to the lots and remove any confusion by the motorists. The Public Works Department, using in?house labor and equipment, plans to remove the ticket booths and gates and to provide clearer signage for these lots. Our first priority will be to remove the gates at the foot of Liberty Street to allow two?way access to the lots during the Water Street construction. The rest of the ticket booths and gates will be removed over the course of the summer, as scheduling allows.

I’ve seen “unmanned area parking system[s]” in Chicago. They’re easy to understand and effective. I would like to see the City get out of the parking-subsidy business before they lay off any more police officers or fire fighters. Subsidizing downtown parking is definitely not a necessity.

City of Peoria, Parking

The parking paradox

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Slate magazine recently published an article about parking. I found this paragraph particularly interesting:

Instead of requiring minimum parking thresholds, parking maximums should be set. As Norman Garrick and Wes Johnson have pointed out, the goal of meeting parking demand in cities is an elusive, ultimately self-destructive quest. As they note, people complain of Hartford, Conn., that there “is not enough parking,” when in fact nearly one-third of the city is paved over with parking lots. “The truth is that many cities like Hartford have simultaneously too much and too little parking. They have too much parking from the perspective that they have degraded vitality, interest and walkability, with bleak zones of parking that fragment the city. They have too little parking for the exact same reason—they have degraded walkability and thus increased the demand for parking.”

Want an example of that right here in good old Peoria? I went out with some friends last night to Cold Stone Creamery in the Shoppes at Grand Prairie. It’s a popular place located in a little strip-mall out-building. There are a number of entertainment and dining options in this area, but none that were walkable from this little dessert place.

For instance, practically across the street is the Rave theater, and not too far away are restaurants like Steak ‘n Shake and Johnny’s Italian Steakhouse. Theoretically, one should be able to park once, get dinner, walk to the movie, and walk over to Cold Stone Creamery for some dessert, then get back in their car and leave. But the development is simply not designed to accommodate that. No one would even think of doing it because of all the obstacles. Sidewalks end, streets are excessively wide, parking lots are huge, and berms provide a visual cue that says, “you’re not really supposed to walk here.” Instead, the clear expectation (and actual practice of most people) is that you would drive from the Steak ‘n Shake parking lot to the Rave parking lot, and finally to the Cold Stone Creamery parking lot.

They have, as the Slate article says, “degraded vitality, interest and walkability, with bleak zones of parking that fragment the [development].” I like the Shoppes at Grand Prairie because it’s like the whole city in miniature — a little analogy of the City’s transportation deficiencies.

Parking requirements have been relaxed in the Heart of Peoria area, but parking minimums need to be reduced throughout the rest of the city. Too much parking only exacerbates the problems of providing sufficient public transportation. Large lots lower density, and public transportation requires high density to be sustainable. It’s the parking paradox.

Hat tip: Eyebrows McGee

City of Peoria, Parking

Ticket booths and gates to be removed from Riverfront Village

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The Issues Update this week included this tidbit of news about the parking lots at Riverfront Village. It looks like they’re going to be taking out the ticket booths and gates that have gone unused for the past four years:

The City owns and operates several parking lots on the Peoria Riverfront. These are the Michel Bridge East and West Surface Lots, Edgewater Lot and Liberty Lot, which are collectively known as the MEL Parking Lots. These lots are controlled by means of three sets of ticket booths and gates, which are accessed from Water Street.

Since 2006, the MEL Lots have been posted 2-hour free parking in an effort to promote short term parking for customer use. (Parking meters and permits are available in these parking lots for long term parkers.) During this time, the ticket booths have been vacant and the gates lifted. Complaints have been received from business owners in the area who feel that the ticket booths sometimes confuse new visitors trying to park in the lots.

These facilities have been left in place in case the City would reinstitute an hourly charge in these lots. If charges were to be reinstituted, staff feels the best way to implement this would be through an unmanned area parking system where patrons pay at kiosks. It seems unlikely that the City would choose to provide manned ticket booths for this area in the future. Since these facilities appear to no longer serve a purpose, they should be removed to create better access to the Lots and to remove any confusion by the motorists.

The Public Works Department, using in-house labor and equipment, plans to remove the ticket booths and gates and to provide clearer signage for these lots. The first priority will be to remove the gates at the foot of Liberty Street to allow two-way access to the Lots during the Water Street construction. The rest of the ticket booths and gates will be removed over the course of the summer, as scheduling allows.

City of Peoria, Parking

Circular reasoning on downtown parking

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Circular parking rampThe City was poised to raise special event parking rates in downtown Peoria parking decks by one dollar last night — from $5 to $6. But it got deferred. Why? Evidently because they want to make sure such a supposedly draconian increase is warranted; to assess whether parking attendants are capable of making $4 change when presented with a sawbuck; to survey the cost of parking in private decks to make sure they’re not going to lose parking patrons. They’re going to do a study and come back with a report in May.

Oh brother.

The City is operating their parking decks at a loss. They are subsidizing downtown parking by setting their rates artificially low. So if they find that private parking decks are matching the City’s parking rates, that’s going to mean one of two things: either the private decks have figured out how to run a profit at that rate (in which case one should ask why the City is running such a huge loss), or else the City’s low rates are artificially depressing the rates private parking decks can charge. I can guarantee you it’s the latter. It has caused several private parking decks to close since the city started getting into the parking business.

So the City’s plan is, apparently, to base its rates on the rates of private parking decks, whose rates are artificially low because of the subsidized rates charged at City decks. Brilliant! A perfect defense for further parking subsidies downtown that the City can ill afford.

City Council, City of Peoria, Parking

Downtown parking rates going up

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During downtown events (such as Bradley basketball games or Peoria Symphony concerts), the city-owned parking decks allow patrons to park for a flat rate of $5. That price may be going up on April 1 if the City Council passes a resolution at next Tuesday’s meeting. The resolution under consideration would raise rates one dollar to a $6 flat fee. The increase is estimated to bring in an additional $61,600 per year.

City of Peoria, Parking

The only “free parking” is in Monopoly

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Free ParkingWhen we used to play Monopoly at my house growing up, not only did landing on Free Parking mean you didn’t land on someone’s hotel on St. James Place, it also meant a windfall of cash, since any Chance or Community Chest fees went into the “kitty” and were awarded to the next person to land on “Free Parking.”

But in the real world, there’s no such thing as free parking, and there is no windfall of cash, either. Gary Sandberg explained it best on Tuesday’s Outside the Horseshoe program on WCBU.  Someone is always paying for parking, even in the suburbs.  The only difference between downtown parking and suburban parking is who’s paying.

Those huge surface lots out by, say, the Shoppes at Grand Prairie, didn’t just descend from the sky.  Somebody bought the land, somebody built the lot, somebody maintains the lot — and that all costs money.  At the Shoppes, or Metro Centre, or Northwoods, or Sheridan Village, the business owners pay for it.  It’s part of their rent structure.  The patrons don’t have to pay (directly) for parking because the business owners have decided to provide “free” parking for their customers.

Now let’s go downtown.  Who owns the land, builds the decks/lots, and maintains them?  For much of downtown, it’s the city.  Can businesses downtown provide free parking for their patrons?  Sure!  All they need to do is work out an arrangement where they validate parking tickets from a nearby city-owned deck or lot.  Then the business pays the city instead of the customer.

But why is the city providing parking (other than street parking) at all?  The city doesn’t build lots or decks in the suburbs for any of the businesses out there.  They didn’t build decks or lots downtown until about thirty years ago.  Before then, downtown developers had to build and maintain their own parking structures.  Remember Sears?  They had their own on-site parking.  Bergners?  Carsons?  The city didn’t provide parking for these businesses.

So, it will be nice having free two-hour parking on the riverfront now, but one has to wonder why the city is providing “free” parking to some businesses and not others.  When Gary Sandberg says the city should get out of the parking business, I think he may be on to something.  If the city sold all their decks and lots (which are not making the city any money), they could get a tidy influx of cash and no longer have the maintenance headaches.

Then businesses downtown would be on an even playing field with the suburbs as far as parking goes, and the city could focus on providing other, more essential services.

Caterpillar, City of Peoria, Museum Block, Parking

Cat Logic: If we have too much, then we need more

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In today’s installment of “Cat Logic,” we turn to Steve Tarter’s column in today’s business section of the Journal Star titled, “Destination Downtown.” I was unable to find it on the web for linking purposes, but here’s the gist of it:

Caterpillar Inc. hired Walker Parking Consultants (wow, a whole company dedicated to parking consulting — what a fascinating job that must be) to look at “a 13-block Downtown area that includes the former Sears block site for Caterpillar’s visitors center.”

Their findings? There’s a surplus of parking, and it’s anticipated that there will be a surplus of parking in the future:

In an area along the river bounded by Adams, Fayette and Harrison streets, consultants determined there were 5,011 parking spaces available with the highest use coming on a weekday morning when 64 percent of the spots were occupied. The lowest use came on a Saturday morning when only 15 percent of available parking was used.

Now, how would you, Average Joe, interpret those findings? If it were me (and I’m no high-paid executive or parking consultant), I would say we don’t need any additional parking created downtown. If, at the very busiest time of day less than 2/3 of the parking is being used, I’d say — we’ve got this problem licked. We’ve reached a saturation point; no more parking needed. Done.

What does Cat say?

Despite the finding, Caterpillar is looking for more parking at the location. “There’s a great deal of unused parking in that (Downtown) site. But Museum Square will depend on convenient parking of those visitors,” said Mark Johnson, Caterpillar’s project manager; referring to an underground parking garage that will add $3 million to the project cost while providing space for 189 cars.

Huh? Now, think about this a second. At the busiest time of any given week, not more than 64% of 5,011 spaces are being used. That means there are at least 1,804 spaces available within a 10-block area downtown at any given time. But Cat believes that the this site’s success will “depend on” having 189 more spaces (at about $15,873 per parking space) immediately on site. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say a Six Sigma black belt hasn’t been working on this project.

Incidentally, note the central location of Museum Square in the study area:

Downtown Parking Study Area

All the parking in the 10-block area — between 1,804 and 4,259 empty spaces at any given time — is within two blocks of Museum Square. In fact, the majority of it is within one block.  But according to Cat, that’s not good enough.

This is a colossal waste of money on top of an already flawed design for the Sears block. The Heart of Peoria Commission, which has been saying all along that we don’t need more parking downtown, has been vindicated by Cat’s own independent consultant’s study. But it doesn’t matter. Cat will continue on their present course, undeterred by the facts.

City Council, City of Peoria, Parking

Free riverfront parking on the council’s agenda

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You may soon be able to park two hours for free — during the day — at the city-owned lots along the riverfront.

On the city council agenda this coming Tuesday is a proposal to change the way fees are charged for the Michel/Edgewater/Liberty and Riverfront Village parking lots. Currently, these lots are staffed during the day with parking attendants and you pay a set rate for every half hour you’re parked weekdays during working hours.

Under the proposed fee structure, there would be no gates or attendants and you would be allowed two hours of free parking at these lots weekdays during working hours. If you parked longer than two hours, you would get a parking ticket. (Incidentally, if you don’t pay your parking ticket, the city approved an ordinance at their last meeting that authorizes the city to send unpaid parking tickets to a collection agency instead of through the courts.)

The Peoria Riverfront Association requested the parking fee change as a way to increase patronage of riverfront businesses and save the city money. The city incurred a net loss of $2,235 in 2005 because the cost of staffing full-time attendants exceeded revenues from parking fees. Much of the revenue comes from businesses who pay for their customers’ parking through ticket validation.

The city would enforce the two-hour limit by having a part-time city employee monitor the lots using a handheld license plate scanner from ParkTrak which basically allows the monitor to do “electronic tire chalking.” Barney Fife would have loved this gadget:

With ParkTrak Pro’s handheld License Plate Recognition technology, a flick of the chalkstick is turned into a click of the trigger. Each click records plate, date, time, and location, while simultaneously comparing duration of stay, distance moved (if any), and scofflaw status. Officers are automatically prompted to issue a ticket when a vehicle reaches overtime status. Flexible software allows for an individual license number’s total time duration to be calculated by stall, block face, street, programmable distance or zones. Added benefits include capturing a wealth of parker statistical data, and best of all electronic chalk marks… THAT CAN’T BE WIPED AWAY…

But before you get too excited about that free two-hour parking, it’s only being proposed on a one-year trial basis, so it may not last long. In any case, it will be done away with when the new museum is built. City Manager Randy Oliver says, “This is a short term solution and will not work upon completion of the Museum project.”