When I travel, I try to make it to downtowns to see how their parking is setup for visitors. This is what I found on my last trip.
In Rapid City, they allow 3 hours free parking on their main street. I talked to downtown gallery owner Joe Lowe about it (we mostly talked politics :)Â and he said that they do monitor it, and you can move your car after 3 hours if you want more time.
In Deadwood I walked from my hotel, but it seemed there was plenty of public parking available for free in flat lots.
In Cody, WY I didn’t see a time limit on the main drag (Sheridan Ave?) and NO parking meters.
In Fort Collins there was 2 hours free parking in the Downtown area, plus 2 hour free flat lots.
While downtown Sioux Falls does allow free parking on Main Avenue, Phillips Avenue does charge on the meters from 9-5, weekdays. I have often argued if we want even more activity downtown we should remove the parking meters on Phillips Avenue from 14th to 6th Street, leave them everywhere else, and still charge for the ramps. I think the Phillips Avenue parking should be a 2 hour time limit, and monitored.
We consistently hear that since the parking system is an enterprise fund, we need the revenue to support it. I think with the possibility of a new ramp, and all the other ramps available and side street meters we could easily afford to give FREE parking on Phillips to visitors. The economic boost would be worth it. I would even implore we charge additional property taxes to Phillips Avenue businesses to offset the meter loss.
I am just baffled how I can visit four other Midwestern communities who have figured out free parking for their visitors, but for some reason this boomtown can’t.
Rapid City has more restaurants and retail downtown. Parking is never an issue. I like the fountains and band shell at night. The parking meters here are expensive. I plugged one once and got shorted 20 minutes. It’s kinda like the green without yellow before red when there were camera tickets.
“Free” parking is not free–subsidized to the tune of 1-4% of GNP (similar to national defense or Medicare). Pricing is information and people respond accordingly. Like with most subsidies, when people don’t need to pay the true cost of a commodity, there are negative externalities as a result of their behavior. Sound parking policy begins with the economics of it all.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519?mt=2&i=136058773
This is coming very late, (I’ve been out of the country) but this is actually proven to have a negative effect on downtowns. I’m currently reading the book ‘Walkable City’ by Jeff Speck (leading expert on urban design) and there’s an interesting chapter in the book that sites stories of towns that installed meters in place of their ‘free parking’. The business owners were furious at first, believing the cost would scare away customers. In fact, the opposite was true. Increased rates led to a large increase in customer turnover (and therefore and increase in sale revenue). It sounds counter-intuitive, but it works. When you have free parking in a high density, social/culturally valued area, people will just leave their cars there for hours, scaring away new customers. Business owners, residents, and employees will occupy spaces that could have been used by visitors and park their cars overnight. This is how the misconception of ‘Downtown doesn’t have any parking’ spreads. Empty ramps, overcrowded on-street parking.
I wish I had read the book earlier when the city raised the prices of the meters/ramps earlier this year. Owner of Zandbroz, Jeff Danz, was actually pushing for later paid hours on the meters to make sure there was more parking for people coming downtown after work (downtown’s peak hours!). The extra money it would generate would be substantial. I would actually like to see ramps free hours increased or made free in some locations. Since most aren’t near popular destinations, people who work/live downtown or are more familiar with it’s landscape, would fill up the ramps while the people who want on-street parking, directly in front of the store they want to visit pay a small premium for ‘premium parking’. We all know those ramps sit empty most of the time, we need to drive cars into them, free parking is a great way to achieve that.
With the exception of Fort Collins, I don’t know that a city the size of Sioux Falls should be looking to smaller, and frankly less urbanized, cities as an example. We have the population and potential to utilize our parking in a smarter way and as an economic tool that our current parking structure isn’t quite achieving.