Jax Beach to shoot self in foot over parking issues

[marksjax]

It appears Jax Beach is about to go down the wrong path...parking meters are coming!
Another example of our 'city fathers' thinking they are doing the right thing by hiring an outside 'consultant' that says you need to charge for parking (because people are parking for free and going to the beach all day and this hurts 'turnover' so the small businesses are negatively impacted).
As we all know, those that go to the beach may also go to some of these small businesses, yes?
By reducing the amount of people that go to Jax Beach (once you have to pay for parking, which WILL be the case and I'm not even a 'consultant') you will also reduce the potential amount of customers that might go to your small business. You will have created a worse problem and you don't even know it yet.
A better solution would be to have a dedicated number of 'limited time' spaces w/out meters in front of said business. That makes more sense. More on the honor system than ticketed enforcement.
Guess these 'consultants' didn't visit Downtown Jax to see how well the parking meters are working for us.
Gotta love government!

http://jacksonville.com/community/shorelines/2010-12-15/story/nows-time-speak-your-piece-about-paid-parking-jacksonville

[JeffreyS]

Well you know how just putting the 2 hour time limit signs in front of the businesses in San Marco and Riverside has ruined those areas. Wait maybe just putting those signs up are a good idea. Somethings are so simple.

[ChriswUfGator]

The destruction these kind of asinine parking policies yield takes years, even decades, to fully occur, and takes just as long or longer to reverse. For the first few years, they'll think they've scored a victory. Years later, once they realize that they've created a whole generation of area residents who won't go there because of the parking hassles, and instead go to Neptune Beach, Atlantic Beach, or the state parks, to go to the beach (which will most definitely hurt sales) it will already be too late. Those people will now be used to frequenting other beaches and other businesses.

That's what all of this nickel & diming everyone does, it has the effect of changing retail patters and creating a whole generation of people who just won't go there because they can easily go somewhere else without the hassles. I wish them well, but I think we all already know how this is going to turn out. This is really asinine in Jax Beach's case, because the number of residents they have would not support the amount of retail, entertainment, and dining venues. Those are supported to a large extent by people who are there to use the beach. They will suffer disproportionately if the city manages to start running visitors off, which is what they've admitted this is designed to do. What a shame.

[marksjax]

Well said ChriswUfGator.
The small businesses have not yet had to deal with the wrath of the customer who got ticketed while visiting their establishment.
Who can enjoy a meal or drink when the timeclock outside is on your mind?
It kills the enjoyment of the meal, etc.
Many levels of problems they create that the consultant ain't telling them.
I think they had made up their minds long ago and hired a sympathetic consultant to give it an official seal of approval so that when it is deemed a bad idea they can say, "Well we hired a consultant"!
That will be no solace for the small business that had already closed by then.

[RiversideLoki]

This is asinine. I hope they don't plan to put meters in front of people's houses on first street. Onstreet parking is the only parking for some apartments.

I don't buy for one second the "hurt turnover" shtick. Most of the people that go to the beach take a break from the beach, go grab some lunch, go shopping at the surf shop, the teeshirt shop, etc. They are shooting themselves in the foot. And if you charge for people to park to go to the beach, you're driving people off of the beaches faster. So no one is going to go to those same small businesses. Or they're going to park further away from the beach and walk. And they won't want to stop in at the small businesses because they have a long walk to haul all of their beach crap back to the car.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[ChriswUfGator]

I think they had made up their minds long ago and hired a sympathetic consultant to give it an official seal of approval so that when it is deemed a bad idea they can say, "Well we hired a consultant"!

You just described the single biggest problem with our local government in a nutshell...

Jacksonville has this culture where the consulting firms are all made up of politically-connected hangers-on whose primary revenue streams come from buddying up to whoever's in power. This creates a situation where nobody tells anyone what they don't want to hear. Every dumbass thing COJ has done over the past 50 years has been supported by some asinine and expensive study or another, sometimes multiple studies. That doesn't make it any less of a mistake. It's just an expensive rubber-stamp for whatever foregone conclusion COJ had already decided on.

This site is the only news outlet that has shed any light at all on this backwards process, publishing the series of white papers and studies supporting all the dumbass "improvements" that directly caused downtown's death spiral. Sad to see the Beach is drinking the same koolaid.

[tufsu1]

actually here's the deal....

the City of Jax beach has long been concerned about parking supplky and demand...on summer weekend evenings, they have a problem with teens and college kids under 21 hanging out in the parking lots and drinking in their cars.

The Police department recommended that the City consider charging for the lots in the evenings as a way to manage the problem and bring in some revenue....so they tried it last year and saw little negative effect.

The City then hired a parking consultant to help them identify ways to set up parking policies and collect revenue in a smart way.

[ChriswUfGator]

actually here's the deal....

the City of Jax beach has long been concerned about parking supplky and demand...on summer weekend evenings, they have a problem with teens and college kids under 21 hanging out in the parking lots and drinking in their cars.

The Police department recommended that the City consider charging for the lots in the evenings as a way to manage the problem and bring in some revenue....so they tried it last year and saw little negative effect.

The City then hired a parking consultant to help them identify ways to set up parking policies and collect revenue in a smart way.

Yes, a quick tour of downtown (what's left of it anyway) really shows how smart this policy is...

[fieldafm]

Wait, so I thought Jax Beach was just looking to make the municipal lots pay-for-use sites real round(not just Labor-Memorial Day).  I missed the part about parking meters.  Where is that literature?

[marksjax]

Councilwoman Penny Christian agreed that the public meetings are key for critics and supporters to turn out because the city will be moving forward on paid parking.

Christian said at the very minimum, she'd like the city to do something to augment more turnover of cars parking in front of businesses and restaurants all day on the so-called "on-street" parking spots outside of lots.

"To have an opportunity for traffic to turn over is a good thing," said Christian. "It will bring more business. The other thing is the economy is bad and that makes it even more frightening if you're a small-business owner."

Sharp said parking simply can't remain the same in Jacksonville Beach.

"We need to do something to restrict the amount of time on the on-street parking spots, like two-hour limits or something like that," said Sharp. "You can't just park your car there all day long and go to the beach, which is bad for the businesses."

Knight supports paid parking revisions and he agreed that something has to be done for on-street parking near businesses. But he also wants to do away with a flat-rate fee for the public parking lots. He said he favors some sort of hourly parking fee at the lots.



I think you read into these statements that they are looking outside of just the city lots. What else but parking meters could they do?

[marksjax]

The consultants also recommended installing parking meters at "on-street" parking spaces because motorists who use the spaces are leaving their vehicles parked there for most of the day. And that, Kimley-Horn concluded, hurts businesses. The parking consultants are the organizers of the Thursday public meetings.


This is more specific evidence from same article which is linked in first post of this thread.

[fieldafm]

I go to the beach quite a lot.  During the day, I'll load up the bike and surfboard and head out.  I can kind of see the argument for two hour daytime parking limits in designated spots in the JB Town Center along First Street, like they have in Five Points... but when I go out, I'll park for the day and may go to 4-5 different business throughout the day by foot or by bike.  That's the whole allure of the beach. 

I can't see that policy being good at night for the bars restaurants b/c people do quite a bit of hopping around within the respective Town Centers(Jax Beach and then Neptune/Atlantic TC)

I think if the city wants to implement more two hour parking limits, they're going to have to also supply park and ride lots in conjunction with the Beaches Trolley service and promote more direct merchant transit programs with beaches merchants(something they dropped the ball on when they rolled out the PCT trolley service and beaches trolley map).  The current end points of the PCT trolley service are not park and ride lots, but retail anchors.

Beach communities that do this(Daytona Beach, Panama City, Destin all come to mind) have better parking facilites in place in dense areas.  Jax Beach really doesn't have that now.

The public hearings are tomorrow night?

[thelakelander]

Free time limited parking in Downtown Cleveland

Couldn't they ensure on-street turnover through time limits without adding meters?   By totally skipping that step (which actually works quite well, btw), it seems this is more about generating revenue through parking.

[marksjax]

Yes three of them all the same day. Kind of weird way to do it but that is how it was set up.
They are making certain that everyone who has an opinion can voice their concerns which is good, but the writing is on the wall.
Just like Jax City Council did with the recent property tax increase. Public discussion is to placate us lemmings.
They have decided this in advance.

Score: Paid Consultants: 1
          General Public:    0

[marksjax]

The citizen's of this area just don't want to pay to park. No matter how you slice it that fact will not change.
And they will 'vote' by not going to Jax Beach as often. Once those behavior patterns change it is hard to get back to where you were before as Chris said earlier.

This is really about cutting back on the amount of rowdy people and jerks that come to the beach. Figuring they will be least likely to pay to park. While this may be the case you will also be alienating the non-rowdy folks who might pay to park occasionally but might also go elsewhere.

The rowdy stuff has gotten out of hand no doubt. But paid parking might not be the best solution.

Have to hire a different consultant to get that answer.