86 parking meters Downtown!

[marksjax]

Why do we have parking meters Downtown?
I am asked often what is wrong down here and although there is more than one answer I tend to think doing away with the parking meters would be a positive step to take.
I am not an urban planner so maybe someone can explain it to me but I don't see the need to restrict parking and charge the public a fee to use that which they already own.

[ronchamblin]

The major problem with removing the parking meters is that the downtown employees, the very one's who should have sense enough to leave the parking spaces for paying clients or shoppers would, because of their laziness and stupidity, take up a parking space "all day long".  Many employees would not want to walk two blocks to a parking lot. 

If the meters were to be removed, there must be a method of keeping the employees off of them so that customers and clients could have the spaces for short visits to downtown.

[thelakelander]

^We don't have nearly the amount of downtown employees that we had when the meters were originally installed.  Also, if you want to preserve parking turnover, you can solve that problem by offering free parking with time limits.

[Ocklawaha]

This would be a great time to start a movement to kill the meters. I got some data from parking enforcement a couple of years ago and discovered that the meters were not paying for the staff and vehicles. If I remember right there are around 43,000 parking spaces in the downtown and around core mostly in garages including about 4,500 meters, both public and private.

So we've created a "welfare class" of useless business wrecking machines. The beloved meters require constant feed and maintenance which only perpetuates the folly of a large city chasing it's own tail. Talk about a zero gain.

If we wanted to "retain income" we could use our peripheral garages and lots, with hourly deals for the purpose of close in park and ride, tied to the Skyway, bus or future streetcar. A bit of promotion and some decent parking/transit package deals might go a long way toward ultimate change.

Parking enforcement would not be sacrificed, it would be expanded; downtown becoming an area of well defined temporal parking zones with traditional white, red, yellow, green painted curbs.

[ronchamblin]

There are perhaps six kinds of potential parking space users.  Retail Customers, Business Clients, Citizens Visiting Government Offices, Tourists, Residents, and Core Employees.

The last two listed are the only ones having any reason to take up a space all day.  The remainder usuall need a space for only an hour or two.

To me, this means that if we could keep the residents and employees from parking in the core spaces all day long, we could then offer free parking for the remaining users listed above.

In other words, the first four types of listed users wish to use the spaces only for an hour or two.  Therefore, there is no need to charge for parking to limit the use of the spaces.

The solution would be to somehow target all of the vehicles used by residents and core employees, and then enforce that they park in lots or multilevel areas.  If this is enforced properly, there will be too many insensitive employees and residents who, by their laziness, well take up valuable spaces all day long. 



   

[Pinky]

^We don't have nearly the amount of downtown employees that we had when the meters were originally installed.  Also, if you want to preserve parking turnover, you can solve that problem by offering free parking with time limits.

Unenforceable.  I think that the meters are doing exactly their purpose, which is to save on-street parking for short term visitors by making it logistically unfeasible to park there for more than two hours.  The system's advantages (easy parking for visitors) easily outweigh any disadvantages (what, a couple quarters??- that's not deterring anyone from coming downtown) and in my opinion it should be left alone. 

[thelakelander]

^How can you say its unenforceable when it works in countless cities across the country? 


Example: Cleveland

Whether you like it or not is one thing, but to say it simply doesn't work is another.

[Noone]

2012-674 is the legislation that will address all these concerns and will be introduced in 3 days at the Jacksonville city council meeting.

2012-674 is on the agenda the next day for DIA Board meeting at 2 pm Ed Ball bldg. rm 851. There will be an opportunity for Public Comment at this DIA Board meeting before the legislation would then go before the various committees and then to city council for approval.

The various Zones, Districts, and new enforcement guidelines are all on the table. There is FREE PARKING but you have to land on it.

[Adam W]

^How can you say its unenforceable when it works in countless cities across the country? 


Example: Cleveland

Whether you like it or not is one thing, but to say it simply doesn't work is another.

I don't know how Cleveland does it. But in some places around where I live, you go to a machine and buy a time-stamped receipt that you place in the window of your car. That way the parking warden knows how long you've been parking there.

In areas where they don't have that, they still have parking/traffic wardens who needs to walk around and keep an eye on the situation. I'm not disagreeing with you at all - Jax might well not need meters, but would definitely need more boots on the ground to enforce the one hour parking if the meters were taken away.

I doubt they have cameras in Cleveland, but cameras are another way to enforce it. I am not a fan of parking meters myself.

I suppose the ideal solution would be some sort of magical, free meter you could use once. That way you wouldn't have to pay to use it and you'd still have something monitoring your time in the space. And maybe the magical meter would take a picture of your license place and send you a parking ticket if you overstayed your time period by 10 minutes or so.

[Pinky]

^How can you say its unenforceable when it works in countless cities across the country? 


Example: Cleveland

Whether you like it or not is one thing, but to say it simply doesn't work is another.

You're right: I should have said "Practically Unenforceable without adding hundreds more parking staffers".  My bad.

That still doesn't change the fact that the two-hour max meters accomplish the same thing, at no cost (indeed, revenue-positive) to the city.

[acme54321]

Come on dude, it's 2012.  There's an app for that.

www.genetec.com/Solutions/Pages/parking-enforcement-and-inventory.aspx

^How can you say its unenforceable when it works in countless cities across the country? 


Example: Cleveland

Whether you like it or not is one thing, but to say it simply doesn't work is another.

You're right: I should have said "Practically Unenforceable without adding hundreds more parking staffers".  My bad.

That still doesn't change the fact that the two-hour max meters accomplish the same thing, at no cost (indeed, revenue-positive) to the city.

[If_I_Loved_you]

^We don't have nearly the amount of downtown employees that we had when the meters were originally installed.  Also, if you want to preserve parking turnover, you can solve that problem by offering free parking with time limits.

Unenforceable.  I think that the meters are doing exactly their purpose, which is to save on-street parking for short term visitors by making it logistically unfeasible to park there for more than two hours.  The system's advantages (easy parking for visitors) easily outweigh any disadvantages (what, a couple quarters??- that's not deterring anyone from coming downtown) and in my opinion it should be left alone.

Pinky is right leave the meters alone if it ain't broke don't fix it. 

[ronchamblin]

The removal of the meters would have to include a prohibition  of the use of core parking spaces by those who would have a need or wish to park for several hours; that is, core residents and employees.

All other users, such as shoppers and visitors would not have a need to park for more than one or two hours.  This limited need by the latter users would eliminate the need to have meters.

The result would be that the fear of getting a ticket by shoppers and visitors would be eliminated, thus improving the overall attractiveness of downtown..... removing a "negative" which has been in the core for too long.   

The trick would be to determine the best way to convince and control the employee and resident parking so that they do not use the available street parking for all day parking.  The employees and residents must use parking garages.

In the future, when and if the downtown becomes more interesting and vibrant, those who wish to be in the core for many hours, would be encouraged by some method to use the garages too. 

[If_I_Loved_you]

Pinky, which major regional shopping mall uses parking meters?

So is Downtown Jacksonville a regional shopping center? Show me a major city that doesn't have parking meter's or the new digital meter's stephen? "New York City retired its last spring-loaded, single-space, mechanical parking meter at 10:25 a.m. on December 20, 2006. It was located at the southwest corner of West 10th Street and Surf Avenue in Coney Island. “The world changes. Just as the [subway] token went, now the manual meter has gone,” said Iris Weinshall, the city’s transportation commissioner, at a small ceremony marking the occasion, the New York Times reported. The new digital meters, which now account for all of the city's 62,000 single-space parking meters, are more accurate and more difficult to break into." this is from Wikipedia.

[thelakelander]

Show me a big city downtown in Duval County that has a situation that requires parking meters?  It sure isn't Jacksonville's Northbank.  Small cities like Winter Park, Sarasota, and Lakeland have more vibrant downtown cores.

Up the street, another example of a city that is finding out people don't like to be penalized to visit downtown is Savannah. For those who want to bum a profit off visitors, Savannah's downtown environment would be ideal. However, that city is another one that has pulled meters off their main retail and dining streets to encourage more people to visit the area.


Savannah

At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves what type of downtown do we want?  We aren't NYC. Heck, we aren't even St. Augustine.  Penalizing people to visit a morbid downtown environment isn't going to help accomplish the goal of bringing it back to life.  All it is, is another obstacle to overcome, all for what amounts to probably less than a couple of million a year.  In terms of having a billion dollar budget, that's peanuts.