Does Downtown Need Parking Meters?

[Lunican]

So what criteria does the city use to determine which roads to install meters on?

What is the process for adding or removing meters from a road?

[tufsu1]

the downtown northbank core has 18 thousand daily end users.  and that base number is declining, not expanding.

please cite your source for this figure

[tufsu1]

BTW, who maintains the streets in the town center? Are they city owned, or private property? If they are city owned, I demand we put meters up immediatly to help step the parking hogs who sit in those spaces for HOURS on end!!! Who do they think they are!?!

inside the center, they are privately owned aznd maintained...including the traffic signal

[Ocklawaha]

Overstreet, there are 18thousand people living working and playing downtown.  There are 36 thousand parking spaces.  Even if every employee parked on the street, there would still be room for twice as many people as are presently downtown.

Where do these figures come from?

As they are far different from other published figures, please cite the source(s).

I need 3 things from you guys.

How many meters within the urban core (what is that core) both north and south bank.

How many garage, lot, rental parking spaces are there in the urban core (within the same bounds).

What is the daily income from the meters on both banks within said bounds.

If you can get this information and post it, even if it's a bit off, or educated guesstimate, I'll present an article on how to kill parking meters, build and support mass transit, and do it without massive public subsidy's. Deal?

OCKLAWAHA

[Sportmotor]

I need 3 things from you guys.

How many meters within the urban core (what is that core) both north and south bank.

How many garage, lot, rental parking spaces are there in the urban core (within the same bounds).

What is the daily income from the meters on both banks within said bounds.

If you can get this information and post it, even if it's a bit off, or educated guesstimate, I'll present an article on how to kill parking meters, build and support mass transit, and do it without massive public subsidy's. Deal?[/color][/b]

OCKLAWAHA

I'd like to use a lifeline...

[Ocklawaha]

Come on TUFSU1, LAKE and (You know who you are "Others") see if you can find the data, I'm awaiting a reply!

WAKE UP! HELLO! ANYBODY KNOW?

OCKLAWAHA

[untarded]

A conference call should be scheduled with Bob and the owners of SJTC and the question should be raised why SJTC doesn't have parking meters.

Maybe Bob would get it.

I know, I know, wishful thinking...

[JaxNative68]

the parking meter downtown are some of the cheapest I've seen in any downtown area . . . so are the garages . . . short term parking, you can't beat the meters . . . long term parking you can't beat the garages . . . park wisely and you won't get a ticket.

I will agree the meters are an eye sore, but that can be overcome by the ticket machines you see popping up in every other city in america to replace the meters.

uptowngirl: it sounds like your problem is with the homeless and not the parking meters.

untarded: SJTC is privately owned and can't be metered by the city.

[Ocklawaha]

How many parking meters do we have? Does anyone know? Are the numbers split up between north and south bank?

OCKLAWAHA

[If_I_Loved_you]

I guess the Answer would be Yes, But during these Hard Times I feel the city should bag them, or double the time for the same Quarter.

[mtraininjax]

Replace the meters with Ambassadors who hold tickets all day long. They are very colorful and very helpful to people downtown....what no rail included in this discussion? I am very saddened.

[finehoe]

D.C. tests new parking technology to help drivers find space, pay more easily

By Ashley Halsey III
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 29, 2010; B01

Long ago, in the tender years of baby boomers, the futuristic Jetsons had cars that parked themselves. Now, as the shadows of boomers grow long, some cars can just about do that.

Ah, you say, but can they find a parking space?

Well, yes. In less time than it took for the visionary self-parking Jetson vehicle to become a reality, so, too, will come help finding that elusive space.

"That concept really is a futuristic concept, but I firmly believe it will be happening soon," said David Palmer, marketing director for Parkeon, a company that manages parking systems.

Parkeon is one of four companies that will install innovative pilot parking programs in the District next month as the venerable parking meter speeds toward obsolescence.

Three of the systems scheduled for trial runs will have sensors in each parking space that communicate with a central control device. That control box will keep track of whether a space is occupied and, if it is, whether the vehicle's occupant has paid to park there. And three of the systems will give drivers the option of paying "the meter" by cellphone.

All four will allow payment by cash or credit card. One system will ask drivers to enter their license plate numbers at the control box when they pay, and parking enforcement officers will be able to use handheld or car-mounted scanners to determine who has paid and who will get a ticket.

Those same sensors that talk to the control box soon could talk to you, too, guiding you to available spaces.

"Washington is taking the lead in this country and almost throughout the world," said UCLA professor Donald Shoup, author of "The High Cost of Free Parking." "Washington has started its [parking] reforms at just the right time, when there's so much new technology available."

Hunting for parking produces more than frustration. Shoup studied a 15-block business district in Los Angeles and determined that cruising about 2.5 times around the block for the average of 3.3 minutes required to find a space added up to 950,000 excess miles traveled, 47,000 gallons of gas wasted and 730 tons of carbon dioxide produced in the course of a year.

The answer, he said, is balancing the cost of on-street parking with that of garage parking. That is something the District has sought to do, and a goal that could be better achieved with parking-space sensors that provide feedback on turnover and duration of vacancies.

Real-time data on available spaces would help drivers even more. Before that can happen, a complete inventory of available spaces must be made and the real-time link to your vehicle has to exist.

"It could happen with a [Global Positioning System], like TomTom or Garmin," Palmer said, or it could come through a commercial Web provider or cellphone application. In addition to helping guide drivers to a space, such technology could alert them that their parking time was about to expire and let them add more time by cellphone from wherever they might be.

With money to be made by the company that creates that final link, Palmer said he is confident it will happen soon.

"Definitely down the road," agreed John Lisle, spokesman for the D.C. Department of Transportation. "We've made data available for third-party apps in other areas that are useful to the public. That [help in finding a vacant parking space] would be very useful, so long as people aren't driving around staring down at their cellphones."

The four pilot programs are expected to be in place by July 19, beginning a 90-day trial that will help guide the District's long-term strategy. The new systems will be installed on Independence Avenue SW; on Wisconsin Avenue, Jenifer Street and 44th Street in Friendship Heights; in the 1400 block of U Street NW; in Foggy Bottom; and near Nationals Park in Southeast Washington. In each instance, tops of parking meters will be removed and the poles will display a number corresponding to the space. Using that number, drivers can enter the information required to park, either by cellphone or at a control box.

This has been a year of innovation for D.C.'s parking systems. In January, the first meters that accepted credit cards were installed at five locations. In April, the option of paying by cellphone was offered at 700 spaces in three areas of downtown: Union Station, Dupont Circle and the area of K and I streets and New York Avenue NW.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/28/AR2010062804850.html

[tufsu1]

DC has not made parking free....they just have a very advanced system...in addition to what is mentioned in the article, they also have meter boxes on some blocks (pay there, get a receipt, put it on the windhield)....and they have meters that take smartcards at Metro stations.

[Dog Walker]

First time I saw meter boxes where you can chose how long you want to pay for and put the receipt on your windshield was in Paris.....FIFTEEN YEARS AGO!  Why are we in the US so far behind?

DC's system isn't advanced, its old, proven technology.  Our parking meters in Jax are at least fifty years obsolete.

STUPID!

[Ocklawaha]

First time I saw meter boxes where you can chose how long you want to pay for and put the receipt on your windshield was in Paris.....FIFTEEN YEARS AGO!  Why are we in the US so far behind?

DC's system isn't advanced, its old, proven technology.  Our parking meters in Jax are at least fifty years obsolete.

STUPID!

Having lived abroad for years, you might be shocked just how behind we are...  As I've said, I went to Colombia looking for the Third World, but I only found it when I returned to Jacksonville!

As for France being ahead of us in parking meters? Well? As parking meters are a curse and anti-productive for business growth, I would rather think THEY are the ones behind!

OCKLAWAHA