The City of Eugene will be losing about $220,000 in parking meter revenue by replacing nearly 300 metered parking spaces with free parking spaces in the hopes of attracting people to park and visit downtown.
The city expanded its Downtown Parking Program last week by replacing metered parking spaces with free two-hour parking spaces between Seventh Avenue and 11th Avenue from Lincoln Street to Willamette Street. The change in parking fees comes from a city council decision last year to take actions to revitalize
downtown and boost the local economy.
Improving downtown parking was one of the top priorities in the downtown revitalization plan and improvements proposed in the parking program include making parking meter payments easier, rebranding and marketing downtown parking, and increasing parking garage security.
“The idea is to remove one of the excuses for people (not) coming downtown,” City
Parking Services Manager Jeff Petry said.
Petry said the city has had off-street free parking for
decades, but the new expansion will involve new street-side parking spaces without cost.
Another goal for the parking program is reducing the number of parking tickets the city distributes. With the installation of meters that take credit cards, people have more
options to pay their parking meter.
“Within a couple of hours of installing the credit card meters, 40 percent of the payments were by credit cards,” Petry said. “Credit cards now represent half of all campus meter transactions … when you give people that option, it reduces the number of tickets we write.”
Isaac Miller, a South
Eugene High School senior, said the meters off-campus were
a nuisance.
“I am not a fan of these things,” Miller said. “I saw one earlier that said ‘credit card only.’ It wouldn’t let me pay with change..”
Miller frequently has to park near the University to do research for a senior project. He said the increased free parking downtown was a draw.
“I’d probably be more likely to drive down there, for sure,” he said. “It adds convenience.”
The city will work with the Community Planning Workshop to monitor the results of newly available free parking downtown. CPW is an experimental branch of the department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University, and has regularly employed students to develop proposals, conduct research and make recommendations for possible solutions to problems in the community on a number of projects.
Bob Parker, managing director of the Community Planning Workshop, said he would meet with Petry later this week to establish exactly what outcomes the CPW would be monitoring.
“I suspect we’ll be monitoring the effects on businesses and parking turnover,” Parker said. “Some concerns expressed is that downtown employees will use the free spaces and patrons won’t get to use them, so turnover is important to local businesses.”
Parker said the CPW has a long-standing research relationship with various city offices and that its members were accustomed to taking up the research end of city projects.
“We’ve partnered with the city on a number of projects, including the recent climate and energy action plan, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian strategic plan,” he said. “So we engage students in these applied projects, primarily with local
governments across the state.”
The downtown free parking program is slated to run from Oct. 1, 2010, until Sept. 30, 2012, at which time its
implications for citizens and downtown business will be evaluated.
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