2008 Parking Study Final Report - Laserfiche WebLink

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i Charlottesville DowntownCharlottesville DowntownCharlottesville DowntownCharlottesville Downtown Parking Parking Parking Parking StudyStudyStudyStudy ExecExecExecExecutive utive utive utive SumSumSumSummarymarymarymary BackgroundBackgroundBackgroundBackground,,,, Purpose Purpose Purpose Purpose and Stu and Stu and Stu and Study Perioddy Perioddy Perioddy Period This study was commissioned by the City of Charlottesville to address a range of issues relating to downtown parking: · There are concerns about the existing and future adequacy of downtown parking. · The current designation of spaces in the core area does not appear to be meeting stakeholders’ needs. · Whether the existing Parking Exempt Zone (PEZ) is still appropriate. · Whether, and how, transit can help to reduce downtown parking demand. The study was overseen by a Stakeholder Group representing downtown stakeholders and City departments. Because the focus was on the needs of downtown businesses and their customers, the study addressed weekday daytime parking. Special events, evenings and weekends were beyond the scope of the study. An inventory of downtown parking spaces was collected in April 2008. A comprehensive occupancy survey was undertaken on Thursday April 17, 2008 for the entire business day, in hourly cycles from 8am to 6pm. The survey date was chosen to be a time when outdoor seating had returned to the Mall and the University was still in session, as directed by the Stakeholder Group. The weather on the survey date was good. The Water Street and Market Street garages were recounted on Wednesday July 16, 2008, to corroborate the April data. A one-day survey cannot reflect all possible conditions, but it does provide a fair reflection of conditions on a typical weekday. Existing Existing Existing Existing Parking Parking Parking Parking Supply and DemandSupply and DemandSupply and DemandSupply and Demand Downtown Charlottesville has approximately 6,000 spaces, of which about 5,000 (84%) are off-street and about 1,000 (16%) are on-street. On typical weekdays during the business day, there is currently enough parking overall for everyone. At the busiest time of the survey, only 63% of spaces were occupied. There were approximately 800 spaces available in the off-street public lots. (‘Public lots’ includes lots for which the public can buy hourly or monthly parking; these may be publicly-owned or privately-owned.) This included approximately 380 spaces in the Water Street garage, 130 in the Market Street garage, 80 in the Water Street lot, and the remaining 220 in other lots. (Note that this refers to a typical business day. On busy weekend evenings with special events, the two main garages can be full or nearly full.) The private lots (lots that are restricted to employees or customers of a particular business) have approximately 1,200 available spaces. However, many of these private lots are unsuitable for public parking (e.g. residential, very small lots, etc). Some are suitable for public parking if the owners see a market, but currently this is unlikely due to the free on-street parking. The on-street parking is under stress. In particular, the two-hour spaces exceeded 85% occupancy (the desirable maximum) for much of the day. This corroborates concerns about the availability of convenient customer/visitor parking. The two-hour spaces were examined in more detail, because there are concerns about the ‘Two-Hour Shuffle’ of commuters using these spaces. The average length-of- stay in two-hour spaces is 1.6 hours, but this hides the fact that many stays exceed the time limit. We estimate that about 20% of stays are overstays. We estimate that at least 10% of vehicles using the two- hour spaces are either performing the ‘Two-Hour Shuffle’ or staying in the same space for four hours or