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HomeMy WebLinkAboutParking Advisory Board - Minutes - 11/05/2018MINUTES of the CITY OF FORT COLLINS PARKING ADVISORY BOARD November 5, 2018 5:30 p.m. 117 North Mason Street – Civic Center Conference Room Fort Collins, CO 80524 FOR REFERENCE: BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: CITY STAFF PRESENT: Bob Criswell, Chair Seth Lorson, Transit Planner Adam Eggleston, Vice Chair Katlyn DeMallie, Business Support Barbara Wilkins Travis Anderson Nora Hill Kayla Boos ABSENT: OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE: Barbara Wilkins Indy Hart, Transportation Board Eileen McCluskey 1. CALL TO ORDER Chair, Bob Criswell, calls the meeting to order at 5:33 2. WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS 3. AGENDA REVIEW No updates to published agenda. 4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Hill motions to approve the September minutes, Eggleston seconds. Minutes approved unanimously. 5. COUNCIL LIAISON REPORT None. Council Liaison: Bob Overbeck Chair: Bob Criswell Vice Chair: Adam Eggleston Staff Liaison: Drew Brooks (970) 221-6386 Administrative Support: Katlyn DeMallie (970) 416-2020 6. PUBLIC COMMENT None. 7. DISCUSSION/INFORMATIONAL ITEMS Seth Lorson reviews the Portland Parking Management Manual. The manual determines how Portland makes decisions on changing the management of public parking in some of their commercial and mixed-use areas. Overall, they take parking occupancy data and use the information to create and scale Parking Management Districts. The first policy talks about the creation of a parking management district. They create time limits and have enforcement for those limits. If that does not resolve the parking issues, the second part would be the implementation of paid parking and pricing. This comes at the request of the district to have some kind of management system. To go to a paid parking system there is a minimum size for the district – 80 parking stalls in 10 contiguous blocks. Then there is a minimum parking demand standard within that area, as well as an outreach process to speak with businesses. The minimum parking demand to establish paid parking is to have 70% of the spots occupied for 5 or more hours a day, or 85% occupied 3 hours or more. The Management Manual describes using pricing to encourage distribution. If you increase the price it will drive people to park in other areas, if you decrease the price you get higher occupancy. Hill asks if those metrics are measured during a particular time of year. If this was being measured right before Christmas it would look differently than mid-January. Lorson states that Portland requires the area to be observed at least two weekdays in separate weeks. The manual does not specify time of year. Once the parking meters go into a district the fees collected pay for the enforcement and the overhead it took to put the meters in. After that, the net profit is split 50/50 between the City and the parking district. The district then uses it for transportation demand management, such as projects for pedestrians, biking, and transportation use. Utter asks what kind of revenue the districts are generating. Lorson states he is not sure what Portland is generating, but right now Boulder grosses about 10 million a year. Lorson asks for the Board’s feedback on the Portland Parking Management Manual. Eggleston states he thinks the plan would be better implemented Citywide and not just in old town. With the population growth we will need parking management all over town. Criswell asks what the status of the sensor installation is. Lorson states that tomorrow the last sensor will be installed. The next step is putting in the Gateways which are what collect the information the sensors gather. Parking information won’t go public on the app yet, but it will be gathering data. The garages are scheduled to go live with the new technology on January 2nd. Eggleston asks how people who don’t want to use the app would pay or know how much each block face costs to park if we used the app for on street parking. Lorson states that the department still needs to discuss if kiosks would be needed, or if you are able to go to app only. Pay stations are a major investment. You would have to create signage that states “pay here” and the kiosk would tell the customer how much parking is. Anderson asks if there is anything that obligates us to go to pay-to-stay, rather than using the same methods that Portland did. Lorson states we are not obligated to use the pay-to stay idea, but it could allow us to slowly move towards something. Criswell states that instinctively he thinks Hill is correct that we have saturated our parking. But if we increase the number of parking spots or turnover, can we handle that kind of traffic in our stores? His other concern is that people won’t pay for parking and go down to Harmony to shop. He is also concerned about the seasons when downtown relies on the locals. Eggleston states that he thinks Fort Collins will become more of a tourist destination, especially with the new water park and New Belgium brewery. How do you educate those visiting about pay-to- stay? Lorson states that there must be signage and it has to be intuitive. Utter asks what Lorson’s interpretation of the thresholds that Portland set are. Does it seem reasonable, low, or high? Lorson states he thinks it depends on the makeup of the area. The people who created this manual are experts in their field. But until we look at our specific blocks you don’t know what the thresholds are going to look like. Utter asks if there is risk of creating a situation where you are incentivizing parking because there would be funding for other projects, referring back to the profit sharing from parking generated revenue in the Portland Manual. Are we getting money from a bad thing – high density parking and single trip vehicles, to pay for the good thing – a transportation demand management system. It’s hard not to imagine that the thing we are funding and want to achieve is hampered by the dependency on the bad thing. We need to consider dependency on future revenue when parking becomes more available. Lorson agrees that is a good question. There have not been good examples where people have adopted transit so much that parking spaces go totally empty. The thinking behind it is paying for the true cost of having a parking spot, actualizing the cost. Wilkins had requested to review opportunities for diagonal parking, but could not attend. The item will be moved to next month so her request can be clarified and she can provide examples she may have. Hill states that Wilkins request probably has to do with the recent changes on Canyon Ave. The parking turned out great there, and she may want to see if there are other places that we could add parking. 8. REPORTS A. BOARD REPORT B. STAFF LIAISON REPORT The City will be hosting a Future of Transit Panel Discussion on November 28, 2018. 9. OTHER BUSINESS 10. ADJOURN Anderson motions to adjourn, Hill seconds. The meeting was concluded at 7:08 pm ______________________________ Chair