Sorry Tom, despite the attractive benches, street trees and brick pavers this area will not be as pedestrian-friendly as hoped.

Why you ask?

Lack of on-street parking.

Someone made the foolish decision to not have parking on Washington Avenue East of Tucker. This decision is going to have a negative impact on the friendliness of the street by having four lanes of fast moving traffic going by you.

The street will seem dead – parked cars have an amazing ability to indicate that something is going on. Can you imagine sitting on one of those benches near the curb line knowing cars, SUVs & buses are going to be whizzing by just a few feet away? Not me!

As a result, these blocks will not be as successful as the blocks to the West. Just imagine the Loop without on-street parking and four lanes of traffic. Yes, you could get through during rush hour much easier but that shouldn’t be the goal. Think of Euclid without street parking – it would be boring and lifeless.

Expecting to have a successful urban retail street without on-street parking is simply naive. Sure, Chicago’s Michigan Avenue doesn’t have on-street parking but it is an exception rather than the rule. This is so basic a principle it makes me continue to wonder if anyone at City Hall or Downtown Now get what urban life is all about.

This is likely the fault of city traffic engineers or perhaps Downtown Now. Could just be a lack of thought – these blocks didn’t have on-street parking before the improvements. Maybe it was just assumed the parking & traffic lanes would be the same? However it came to be, it is unfortunate. Traffic moving faster is always contrary to pedestrian-friendly.

The good news is this is reversible. Re-stripe the street and install some parking meters and the life of the street will improve dramatically. Plus, this reduces the need for ugly parking lots and garages. But, I’m not optimistic the city will wake up and realize the folly of this mistake.
I revisited the issue again on July 1, 2005 in a post called ‘East Washington Avenue: To Park or Not To Park?’

This evening on the way to the First Friday Gallery and Design Walk downtown I couldn’t help but notice cars parked on Washington Avenue East of Tucker. This is special because the street has neither parking meters or no-parking signs. So is it allowed or not? I was excited to see people parking along this stretch of Washington Avenue. It looked and felt so much better. But later what did I spot attached to the lamp posts with string? No-parking signs. At some point after 6:30pm the city came by and attached temporary “no-parking tow away zone signs.” They weren’t ticketing or towing. They were simply trying to keep the area lifeless and sterile.

Five months had passed without any indication of parking being allowed or not allowed. So people started parking on the street when visiting restaurants or galleries. Realizing the error of not blocking parking the city put up paper signs until they could get permanent signs in place to prohibit parking. This was all very deliberate and poorly executed. Two days after this post the Mayor’s blog announced a downtown traffic & parking study.

On July 15, 2005 the issue came up again:

Today Downtown St. Louis Partnership President Jim Cloar included the following in his weekly notes to members:Curb-side parking is prohibited along Washington Avenue east of Tucker. Some “entrepreneurial” motorists realized that “No Parking” signs had not been installed and have been camping out all day, playing havoc with buses, delivery trucks and traffic in general. That has been corrected and tickets will be issued going forward.

The stupidity of his statement is so infuriating. Where does one begin?

I concluded the post stating, “We must rescue our streets from the very organization that is charged with promoting downtown!”

I quickly did a couple more posts on the subject in the following days. On July 17, 2005 I posted an online poll and on July 18, 2005 I posted findings from an informal traffic count.

My most recent post on the subject was this past December in reviewing the draft traffic/parking study:

While they say that on-street parking has not been ruled out I’m suspicious. They hinted at allowing parking except during peak hours. I pointed out after the meeting to Doug Shatto [study consultant] how KitchenK will not use their sidewalk cafe license until they have a row of parked cars to make sidewalk dining more hospitable to their patrons. I also pointed out that Copia is allowed to take a traffic lane for valet parking. If we can take a lane for a valet we can certainly take the balance of the lane for parking as the flow is already restricted. I still want to see on-street parking all the way from Tucker to at least Broadway.

While I was rightfully suspicious in December it also seemed pretty clear that many folks living and working in the area that on-street parking was going to be necessary to continue the vibrant street life we see west of Tucker to the blocks east of Tucker. In between posts I talked up the issue to as many people as possible, including those that might be able to have some influence such as developers Kevin McGowan, Matt O’Leary and Craig Heller. I already knew the city’s Planning & Urban Design director, Rollin Stanley, would be supportive of on-street parking. I just wasn’t sure if he’d be able to charm his political colleagues enough to get them to concede on this issue.

Not sure what finally tipped the scales but this week signs permitting on-street parking were installed.

The signs appear on a two block area from 10th Street west to Tucker. Some of the old no parking signs have not yet been removed so it is still a bit confusing but it is a work in progress and some signs are behind construction barriers.

But the new signs present some issues of their own:

Two-Hour Parking

except

7:30am-8:30am

4:30pm-5:30pm

Okay, they are wanting to exclude the morning & afternoon rush. Traffic on Washington Avenue is not that heavy but if that is what it takes to get parking otherwise I’m fine. Besides, this puts us one step closer to getting rid of the rush hour exception.

But what is missing?

“Monday-Friday” is missing from the signs. Maybe they are going to come back and add a separate small sign above or below that indicates it applies only to weekdays. But if they simply add a Monday-Friday sign then it will be confusing if the M-F part applies to the rush hour exception or to the entire two-hour parking permitted. The M-F part should have been included on the sign just above the hours. Unless they intended to keep parking off the street for the Sunday morning rush hour…

As far as rush hours go I think ours is relatively light. This is reflected, to a degree, in the exception limited to just one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon.

What does not appear on the two-block street are parking meters. But don’t look for any conventional meters to appear. Just don’t expect free parking either.

Rollin Stanley has been pushing for more modern metering since his arrival a few years ago. I think he may have succeeded in getting this area of Washington Avenue as a trial area for ‘pay-n-display’ meters. One such manufacturer is Parkeon.

I’ve used these in other cities and they work great:

Valet parking is another issue. When Copia opened last year between 11th and Tucker they began taking a lane in the evening for their valet parking. I think this is part of what prompted the allowing of on-street parking. How can you justify not having parking on the street because it will impede traffic flow and then take out a lane for valet parking? But the problem is the amount of space Copia (and Lucas Park Grille to the west) take up for the valets. It is huge! You’d never see such a gap for valet parking in other areas. The trendy Sub-Zero martini bar on Euclid in the CWE comes to mind. I don’t think they actually take any spaces — the valet comes out to the street to get your vehicle. In Clayton the valets are limited to I believe only two parking spaces — maybe three. Copia has been starting their valet service before 5pm so we’ll see if they continue to do so even though the street is supposed to remain clear from 4:30pm-5:30pm. Keeping a check on the valet space is the next big issue to address.

Signs permitting two-hour parking will likely need to be redone to indicate the rush hour ban only applies to Monday-Friday. With the success this will bring it will hopefully only be a matter of time before we can begin pushing for on-street parking on the remaining blocks to the east.

– Steve