E Street Plaza Parking Lot to Return to “Paid” Status

While it seems the true purpose of the press release was to discuss the Second Street Corridor Improvements project, which was funded through federal American Reinvestment and Recovery Act and City of Davis Redevelopment Agency funds at a time when the city is lacking funding to do basic road repair work, it gives us the opportunity to discuss parking once again.

The city has long been proposing adding a new parking structure perhaps, on that property between E and F and 3rd and 4th, which currently houses, among other things, Kinkos.  That would be a costly redevelopment project were it to go through.

The suggestion made on Tuesday night, however, suggests a different approach may be needed – an informational campaign to let people know that there is plentiful parking and not very far away from their destinations.

Rather than spending more money to put in a new and elaborate parking structure, perhaps the city ought to study ways in which to inform and convince people to park in the existing parking structures.

Instead, we have seen a bunch of piecemeal approaches that have had limited success.  One of them is the paid parking lot in the E Street Plaza.  Davis has always avoided the parking meter approach that other cities have taken to both parking allotment and revenue.

Instead, the city has imposed a very restrictive two-hour parking limitation on street parking with provisions against reparking on the same block.  The result of that was a loss of revenue for the city, as the enforcement mechanisms proved too strong a deterrent.  Moreover, they would seem to hinder the shopping experience.

Another problem is that while we say we want our downtown and core to be bike and pedestrian friendly, there are no bike lanes and, in fact, bike travel is rather dangerous given the traffic, lack of visibility and other problems.

The city received grant funding for re-doing Second Street.  According to the press release, The Second Street Corridor Improvements project included installation of “bulb-outs” at the intersections of C, D, E, F and G; improved storm drainage; enhanced crosswalk markings and LED lighting throughout; and street resurfacing between B and H Streets. Restriping parking areas resulted in a net increase of 9 parking spaces. New on-street bicycle parking was installed in front of the Varsity Theater, accommodating 11 bikes.”

While that may sound like a good idea, it is still problematic to ride one’s bike down Second Street.

One radical solution might be to eliminate street parking, except for a few short-term loading and pick-up areas, and to create bike lanes.

That might have the effect of giving people the incentive to fully utilize the parking structure, while opening up the streets to bikes and pedestrians.

My guess, though, is that the downtown businesses would balk, fearing probably, with a good deal of justification, that by eliminating street-side parking, their business would be reduced.

Absent that, we are simply spinning our wheels and throwing money around in a fashion that in the end might actually go against what we are trying to do.

—David M. Greenwald reporting