Readers Mixed on How to Reduce Auto Congestion in Forest Park

A few of you have expressed that you feel the weekly poll results here are predictable. Maybe you’re more perceptive than me because I couldn’t have predicted the outcome of the poll last week.

Here are the final results:

Q: How should we address auto congestion in Forest Park? (Pick up to 3)

1. Run the existing Forest Park Trolley more frequently 44 [21.57%]
2. Build a trolley/streetcar circulator system within the park 35 [17.16%]
3. Change nothing, fine as is 32 [15.69%]
4. Whatever you do don’t allow overhead wires within the park 23 [11.27%]
5. Ban cars in the park at peak times only 17 [8.33%]
6. Charge a toll per car to drive into the park anytime 15 [7.35%]
7. Charge a toll per car to drive into the park at peak times only 11 [5.39%]
8. Ban cars in the park at all times 10 [4.9%]
9. Build an elevated monorail circulator in the park 9 [4.41%]
10. Build an electric bus circulator system within the park 7 [3.43%]
11. Unsure 1 [0.49%]

I’m not sure how I’d feel about tracks and/or overhead wires in Forest Park, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like a monorail. I included that option as a joke, but 9 voted for it.

Thankfully banning cars all the time got less than 5% of the vote. Comments on the original post showed a variety of viewpoints. I think it is fair to say no consensus was reached, the top three answers above are pretty dissimilar.

The Zoo and the Art Museum are the two biggest generators of autos, besides special events like the Ballon Glow.  The Zoo will be moving most parking across I-64 and using a gondola to get people into an expanded zoo. The Art Museum opens a new wing this coming weekend with a below-grade parking garage:

The design organically links the East Building to the Cass Gilbert. A new grand staircase provides a seamless transition to the lower-level galleries, where a concourse leads to a new café, a gift shop, auditorium and the new 300-space parking garage. (West End Word)

Both of these efforts will help. I think we need a year or two of both changes and evaluate then. In the meantime I’d like to see the Forest Park Trolley become more BRT (bus rapid transit) like with actual stations, longer hours, notification of the next trolley bus, etc. Hybrid buses would be nice to reduce pollution.

— Steve Patterson

Metered Parking: Downtown To Be Treated The Same As The Rest Of St. Louis Starting July 1st

The free ride downtown will soon be over. Effective July 1st metered parking downtown will no longer be free, the Treasurer’s press release:

The facts got a bit twisted in the local media:

For decades, flashing “expired” signs went unenforced in downtown parking meters on Saturdays. But City Treasurer Tishaura Jones announced on Tuesday that the city will end the long-standing policy and start requiring people to pay for street parking on Saturdays.

Starting on July 1, Jones said, downtown motorists will be required to pay for using parking meters on Saturdays, from 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. To help ease the change, violators will be issued warnings on the first two weekends of July. (stltoday)

7am? Went unenforced? To be fair to the paper this “violations” view came from the treasurer website:

Effective July 1, 2013, the Parking Division will begin enforcing parking violations, including expired meters, in Downtown St. Louis on Saturdays.  

Yesterday Jones replied to my email inquiry, indicating:  “The previous policy was the first two hours were free.”  However, Jones’ statement doesn’t jive with with the current meters:

Jones indicated these “tags will be updated shortly. They be replaced before July 1.” Over downtown 3,275 meters need changing with only 7 business days remain before July 1st. As indicated, this decision was made on May 9th so it is reasonable to expect all to be updated in 7 weeks time. Still, I’m bothered by the apparent confusion as to what the policy has been.

Maggie Campbell, who recently resigned as President of the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis, was an advocate for free parking seven days a week. I sat on a downtown parking committee with her a few years ago and we disagreed on this issue. I agree with parking experts like The High Cost of Free Parking author Donald Shoup (video) and Parking Management Best Practices author Todd Litman that pricing should not be free, but set to create turnover.

I think Jones may be confusing the 2-hour limit with free saturday parking. In theory the limit for most downtown spaces is two hours, after which the enforcement officials would drive around putting a chalk mark on tires and ticketing vehicles that hadn’t moved in two hours — regardless if the meter had been paid. It is this time limit that has never been enforced anywhere in the city. Two very different issues a banker might get confused.

A puzzling part of this change is who has authority to set policy, her or the Board of Aldermen. Jones directed me to Missouri statute RsMO 82.485:

It shall be the duty of the supervisor of parking meters to install parking meters, collect all parking meter fees, supervise the expenditures for repairs and maintenance, establish and supervise a parking enforcement division and a parking meter division to enforce any statute or ordinances now or hereafter established pertaining to the parking of motor vehicles, including automated zone parking and all other parking functions, and to make all disbursements on any parking contracts, including employment, consulting, legal services, capital improvement and purchase of equipment and real property which may hereafter be made by such cities, subject to audit in the manner provided by state statute.

The treasurer’s website also references RsMO 82.487, relating to the duties of the parking commission. Who is this parking commission anyway?

The Parking Commission consists of the following:

• Tishaura Jones (Treasurer)
• Carl Phillips (Parking Administrator)
• Todd Waeltermann (Director of Streets)
• Ald. Freeman Bosley, Sr (Chair of Streets Committee)
• Elaine Spearmon (Comptroller’s Office representative)

Meetings of the CITY OF SAINT LOUIS PARKING COMMISSION are open to the general public and held every second Thursday of each month at 10:00 a.m. in Room 220 City Hall, 1200 Market Street, St. Louis, MO 63103.  Please call 314-622-4700 for more information.

Yet the Board of Aldermen has passed numerous ordinances related to parking, such as Parking in the Third Ward or Parking Meter Division Employees relating to pay scale of employees.   Hopefully Tishaura Jones will be successful in doing what she campaigned on, removing parking from the Treasurer’s office. Bankers should not determine parking policy.

— Steve Patterson

Central Valet Zone Now On Tucker

I’ve been writing about valet parking since July 2005. Years ago valets would take every on-street parking space on the block in front of the restaurant that hired them. leaving no spaces for the public to use. They’d place valet signs in bike lanes.

Finally the city to placed signs on the meter of the spaces that were permitted for valet service, including days of the week and hours of operation. The valets continued to take more spaces than given, again inconveniencing the general public. For example, until recently, we had three different valet stands in the two city blocks of Washington Ave between 10th and Tucker (12th), two were directly across the street from each other!

The city has permitted valet on Thursday-Saturday evenings after 6pm. Lately the city did something it should’ve done 8 years ago — created a central valet zone to cover these two blocks. So now on Tucker from St. Charles St to Washington Ave you have a bus stop and a valet zone. This area didn’t have any on-street parking before, it was just excessively wide.

Valet problems are solved, right? Wrong! The valet companies still feel they have the right to take public parking whenever and where ever they like.

Empty spaces mean the city isn’t getting revenue to pay off bonds to cover parking garage debt. Since it was before 5pm I was able to email the above pic to the appropriate people so they could come out and tell them they couldn’t do this.

I personally don’t care if valeting happens 7 days a week, as long as it is in the central spot on Tucker so the public spaces remain available for the public to use.

— Steve Patterson

No Parking Means No Parking

Ninth Street in front of Culinaria has many free short-term angled parking spaces, but the area in front of the door is a no parking zone. A driver of a Cadillac found this out recently…

I wonder what the owner of the car thought as s/he tried to remove the sticker? My guess is the city is no good, downtown sucks, etc. Some feel entitled to break rules then blame others when caught.

What’s the big deal about parking here?

Well, my guess is to make sure drivers leaving a space don’t back into the crosswalk or cause congestion problems in the 9th & Olive intersection. Enforcement only goes so far, design also plays a role.

A curb bulb could eliminate this problem, it wouldn’t have cost much when the 9th Street Garage was being built. Now it would be very costly to modify the area. A bulb out would be nice because it would give Culinaria more sidewalk space when they sell food & drink on the sidewalk during games, plus it would provided room near the entrance for bike parking. When the current bike parking is used the sidewalk becomes too narrow.

Don’t expect to see any change though, drivers will see an opportunity and then bad talk the city when called out.

— Steve Patterson

Wheelchair Users Unable To Pay Parking Fee With Credit Card

Just weeks before Tishaura Jones was sworn into the office of St. Louis Treasurer I posted about a problem with a city-owned parking lot on Olive (see Wheelchair Users Unable To Pay Parking Fee In City Parking Lot). In that post I showed how disabled drivers that use wheelchairs would be unable to pay the central machine.

At the time the city said they planned for the two disabled spaces to be free of charge, so disabled users didn’t need ADA-compliant access to the machine. The other night I noticed the city installed two old fashioned parking meters between the two disabled spaces.

Problem solved, right? Wrong! This means those parking in the two disabled spots must carry coins to feed the parking meter while everyone else gets the option to pay by coin or credit card.

The city made an error and didn’t consider disabled users. Then in trying to fix their error on the cheap they created a problem of inequality.
— Steve Patterson