West Main Street Parking Study - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

WEST MAIN STREET PARKING OPPORTUNITIES AND ANALYSIS City of Charlottesville Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates Inc. | 8 Meetings and interviews with corridor businesses and stakeholders found similar concerns and perceptions. Specific issues raised during these conversations related to accommodating church patron needs, deterring university-related consumption of on-street parking, the need for short- term transactional parking and loading, the lack of enforcement, and the need to protect residential streets from parking encroachment. FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS Designated public parking – both on-street and off-street – is constrained on the West Main Street corridor at present but generally sufficient to meet existing demands. The highest demand occurs during weekday mid-day hours when off-street parking is generally occupied by university or hospital-associated employees, students or visitors while, at the same time, general daytime consumers come to the corridor to shop and dine. Sunday mid-morning through mid-afternoon also poses a challenge as church and commercial parking demands converge. Although retail and dining demands are high on weekends and during evening hours, employment or university associated demands have abated providing some parking relief. Reducing the on-street parking supply on the corridor, while modest in total numbers, could have significant negative impacts on corridor’s commercial enterprises unless it is concurrently mitigated with better on-street management, better information on available parking resources, and more off-street opportunities for workers and patrons. These parking policy and management recommendations are addressed later in the report. Parking on the corridor is currently unmanaged or poorly managed. On-street or public off-street parking is routinely occupied for long periods of time by employees of both the small commercial establishments as well as university patrons. There is a substantial quantity of underutilized off- street parking, however, this parking is generally not publically available. All of these provide an opportunity for mitigation for any potential reduction in on-street parking. Initial recommendations are to:  Meter both on-and off-street public parking, accommodating free very short term parking (15 minutes or less). Metering parking can more than triple parking turn-over rates effectively increasing parking access even with a decrease in parking supply.  Prioritize on-street parking for short duration, transactional parking and loading activities. Through pricing strategies, encourage longer period parkers (greater than 1 hour) to utilize off- street facilities.  Maintain parking time limits during the week, but relax time limits during non-workday days and hours. Four-hour parking limits in off-street lots should be reduced to 2 hours during the work day to deter employee parking.  Promote trolley and Route 7 service, especially for lunch hour trips. Although data is not specifically available, observational indications are that a significant share of mid-day, weekday patrons are traveling short distances that may be effectively accommodated by transit service if barriers to transit use can be overcome.  Negotiate agreements for employee parking. Underutilized existing private lots can accommodate employee needs well on weekends and after 4pm. This would open up on- street parking for higher value patron use.  Improve wayfinding and guidance for visitors to indicate where public off-street parking is available. Adopt and encourage the use of “smart” meters and off-street lot/garage control devices to provide patrons with real time parking availability information via apps and other techniques.