22 - Laserfiche WebLink

-On the Hexagon Parking Survey, at Table 1, the Saturday noon count measures the event parking pattern for the Farmers Market. -With special events, the need is for overflow parking, such as could be provided by completion of the railroad corridor parking between Spring Street and Ray Street. 4. Evening peaks, particularly on weekends, and with the Barone's crowd on summer Thursday evenings. -The Hexagon Parking Survey, at Table 2, with two Thursday night counts measures the Barone's peak. The two Friday night counts measure the weekend evening peak. The PDA Parking Committee is doing further analysis on the other peak times measured by the Hexagon Parking Survey. But the priority in light of the Pastime Plaza project would appear to be the lunch crunch from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on week days. The Critical Role of Private Parking Lots The Hexagon Parking Study included several private lots —the Round Table Pizza lot owned by Barry Swenson on the 500 block; and the Ace Hardware lot on the 600 block. It could have included the Tong-Vaughn lot on the 400 block which functions as if it were a public parking lot on a first come-first parked basis. Other private parking lots provide substantial parking. The private parking spaces downtown are typically not carefully policed, do not have time limits, and are often used by customers and employees of unrelated businesses. John Malone, former owner of the Domus, now Ace Hardware, lot, captured the attitude of many private parking lot owners when he said that "As long as my last customer driving into my parking lot has a space, I do not care if other people are using the lot." But, once parking saturation is reached, the owners of those private lots can and will start policing, putting time limits, designating spaces for specific users, installing customer only signs, and generally restricting the available parking supply. Friday, March 6, 2015 was one of several recent days when parking reached saturation. The public lots in the railroad corridor were full, and overflowed into private lots nearby. The owner of the Pereira lot (Old Train Station and new building on Angela) responded immediately, and by Saturday installed a barricade denying pedestrian access through his private parking lot, blocking pedestrian users from the Vaughn-Tong lot from the short pedestrian route to the public parking in the railroad corridor. Increased protection of private spaces like that is to be expected with parking saturation. 3