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11 Estimated impact of commuter parking in two-hour spaces The final element of the analysis is to estimate the balance between short-term visitors and people who are in downtown all day. Some people may be in downtown all day but move their car from one two-hour space to another during the course of the day. These may be visitors making multiple stops in a single visit to downtown, or they may be commuters who use the two-hour spaces for convenience and move their cars around to avoid tickets (the ‘Two-Hour Shuffle’). In this analysis, these people are termed Shufflers. We assumed that any vehicle making more than one stay of two hours or more is a shuffler. This assumption will likely include a few people who are not shufflers (for example, people making separate morning and afternoon visits to downtown), and exclude a few people who are shufflers (for example, people who moved their cars at the same time as the count and were therefore under-counted, and people who self-validate a two- hour stay in a garage as part of their shuffle). Overall, the estimated number will be reasonable. Others may be in downtown all day but simply leave their vehicle beyond the time limits rather than performing the Two-Hour-Shuffle. Someone who stays approximately three hours may be a shopper overstaying, or may be a commuter who is late for the Two-Hour Shuffle. Someone who stays approximately four hours or more is more likely to be a commuter (several of these people stayed four hours in one space, then a gap for lunch, then four hours in another). We therefore identified people who stayed four hours or more in one space as Major Overstayers. Some major overstayers may have disability permits, entitling them to stay for an indefinite duration, but this will likely have a minimal effect on the results. Table 2.6 divides the vehicles into these categories. Of the 1,094 individual vehicles that used the two- hour spaces during the day, about 50 (5%) were Shufflers and about 80 (7%) were Major Overstayers. Some vehicles were in both categories. Overall, about 10% of vehicles using the two-hour spaces were either Shufflers or Major Overstayers. Another 9% were Definite Overstayers, a category which likely includes visitors as well as commuters. This is an important result. The expectation had been that commuters making the two-hour shuffle would be a significant issue. In fact, the results suggest that two problems are significant: not only the two-hour shuffle, but also major overstays. We believe that both of these problems are attributable to commuters. Shorter overstays (the three-hour stays) are also significant, but are less clearly attributable to commuters rather than visitors. Although the Shufflers and Major Overstayers are a relatively small minority of people, their all-day presence gives them a disproportionate impact on parking occupancy. Table 2.7 summarizes the number of spaces that were occupied at each hour by the Shufflers and Major Overstayers. At the busiest times of day, more than 30% of the two-hour spaces are occupied by Shufflers and Major Overstayers. Without the Shufflers and Major Overstayers, occupancy of the two-hour spaces would not have exceeded 75% at any time. This is shown on Figure 2.3.