City unveils the latest parking study

Part one of two

Perhaps there have been parking studies in Leavenworth before, some of which likely just sat on the shelf. But this latest study to address the significant parking problems in Leavenworth appears to be a different animal altogether.
On May 2, Rick Williams consulting presented their findings from their study of the parking issues on a several typical busy summer days. Some of the results will surprise no one, but other results might raise some eyebrows.
Rick Williams Consulting, based in Portland, Oregon, has been in business for 30 years. They’ve done parking management plans for over 100 cities. In his public presentation at the Festhalle on May 2, Williams said they worked with the stakeholder advisory committee to come up with some guiding principals, which are really important in parking management because there must first be priorities before decisions can be made.
“We want to make decision based upon statement of intent, where we want to go. Who should park? Who has priority to park on the street? Where should employees park? Where should residents park? Should there be a time limit on streets? What is the role of the city? If we have those priorities, how and when do we make a decision?,” Williams said. “If we don’t have those types of statements, it’s hard to say this will work or won’t work. The reason we’re doing this is it facilitates and supports guiding principal number one, two or three.”
The data, Williams said, pertains to most everyone, because when it comes to parking, nearly everyone is a professional.
“When you are parking consultant, you’re always working with people who park cars. That is why data is important because parking is as much perception as reality. We have the guiding principals, but do we have data that says we really have problem? Where is the problem? Do employees really do X?,” Williams said.”We get a lot of feedback from stakeholder committees, but if you don’t have data, we’re just talking back and forth. So you have guiding principals and objective data, then we can make decisions.”
Williams said he wanted the public to understand the priorities and how the system works. How will this problem be solved? How will Williams recommend the problem be solved?
In terms of assessing capital needs, Williams said they are only looking at the current operations of parking, which he felt were great, in terms of financial stability. He said the city was doing a great job of managing its capital.
“That’s a good thing for the future, but they’re also beginning to run analysis about the future. What do we need in the future? We’ll have that in June/July as well,” Williams said.
In terms of public engagement, the Festhalle meeting was the initial public house, but Williams promised to come back with strategies, which the public may or may not like. Finally, they’ll write a report to give to the mayor and council to see if they can get it adopted through a public process.
The operative term in a parking management plan is “management,” he said.
“You could have a great parking plan but it sits on the shelf. For all of us in the room, if we think parking in Leavenworth is an issue which it appears it is, it means the status quo needs to change because parking management is to address issues of change,” Williams said. “Our firm is really concerned that when we do a product like this that it is implementable and it focuses on the word ‘management.’ It’s not a parking plan, it is a parking management plan, which means it’s moving forward and active. This is going to be about change in the future.”
He called it a big study area, stretching from Ski Hill Drive and Third Street on the west to 14th Street on the east, Evans, Birch and Poplar on the north and Commercial Street on the south. They identified every on-street parking stall, by location, by block fare in every block face in this zone.
They also identified every off-street parking site available in this zone, whether it is public or private. In terms of the guiding principals, Williams highlighted several.
“On street in the commercial zone, the highest priority are customers and visitors. A customer and visitor is defined as someone who lives in Leavenworth and comes downtown to shop. It’s someone who lives in Portland and comes into town to visit and attend an event,” he said. “It’s basically anybody who is not employed in the commercial zone. That is the highest priority for on-street parking.”
For any street zoned for residents, the highest priority is the residents and their guests. For the off-street system, every property owner should have the highest priority for their customers and their employees on their lots.
There are 71 separate parking sites in Leavenworth, some have available supply, which could be shared, he said. “Employees are the responsibility of businesses. The city can be a partner. The city can’t make employees do anything, but their employer can. We want businesses to say this is a partnership. The majority of parking in Leavenworth is in private ownership,” Williams said. “The priority on-street is customers and visitors. We need to work with businesses so they know they are responsible for their employees.”
Turnover in the downtown should be high. The system should provide enough time for customers to park, but also a high level of turnover that allows increased capacity of the system throughout the day.
If a person parks all day on street, the capacity of that stall is one, he said. The average turnover rate for a stall in any retail core is five.
“If I can get the right person to the right stall, I can either get one parking stall for every long term parker or I get five more trips into that at no extra charge. Turnover is very important because we want to get all the capacity we can out of our system,” he said.
Williams said great infrastructure is already in place, but the signage could use some work. There should be a clear picture of where customers and employees should park and how to park.
Use of bikes, transit and shuttles can be part of the parking system. Williams said one of their key metrics is the 85 percent rule. When should you pull the trigger? When do you make decisions? He said they use the 85 percent rule.
“If part of the supply is consistently over 85 percent occupancy, we have to at least have the discussions about getting your occupancy below constrained parking,” Williams said. “The 85 percent rule becomes our decisions trigger.”
Market research tells that when a visitor comes into town and the parking is in excess of 85 percent occupancy, literally their angst level goes up. Their experience is heavily impacted. On the map presented, the 85 percent was indicated by red coloring.
“And you may be at a point where you’re behind the eight ball for planning. Because if you’re over 85 percent, you may already be in a deficit. It takes two to three years to bring new supply online,” he said. “The one to shoot for is to get into the middle, that orange box. The 75-80 percent during the peaks hours means you always have some available. You have flex in your system to accommodate seasonal adjustments, flex in the system to accommodate employee growth, flex in the system to accommodate visitor and residential growth.”
If you have 45 percent use and 55 percent empty, Williams said they’ve found that hurts downtowns. There is not enough traffic volume to support quality retail businesses.
Williams said they spent three days in Leavenworth, walking the streets. They found the on-street system to be very robust particularly in the core. It is almost always constrained.
“The average duration of stay of people parking on the street is less than three hours. If we were to take out employees who were parking on the street, the average time would be closer to two hours,” he said. “What it means, people come to hotels, leave their cars and walk into town. Your turnover is actually good, but have a lot of people parking longer than five, six to seven to eight hours.”
Private lots have a large supply, Williams said, but it needs a high level of coordination to bring that supply onto the shared use system. Remote lots present an option. The P6 lot on the west end of town has a lot of supply that is not connect to downtown, he noted.
Some employees are seen moving around all day. Some employees are seen parking in the same stall all day. In terms of priorities, Williams said the system needs to be aware of that, one person parking in one stall all day.
He felt there is a good skeleton of signage, but it is not well placed. It needs to be pre-communicated before downtown. The biggest issue downtown is no regulation.
“Anybody can park anywhere for as long as they want. That’s very unusual for a town promoting visitor-tourists. That’s something to think about, particularly if you’re over 85 percent. It might have been a good idea in the past, but is it a good idea for the future having no controls? You need to get the right car to the right place,” he said. “We need to take control and think about what happens after the reshuffle.”
There are 2.600 total stalls, 846 on street and 1,700 off street, the majority of which are in private ownership. There are 1,600 stalls on 70 sites.
“We survey all the on-streets stalls every hour, 10 hours a day on the entire 846 stalls for on-street parking. We know what’s happening every hour. Off-street, we were able to sample 86 percent of the off-street supply. We couldn’t get it all. We had 13 lots outside the study zone which are potential opportunity sites,” Williams said. “On-street, there are 846 total stalls..826 of those have no limit. That is really unusual. There are only 20 stalls of controlled parking downtown. If we are constrained, we need to do something about that. That is very unusual for a town seeking to attract visitors.”
The peak parking time is the midday, which is traditional, he said. At the peak hour on the weekday, there were 343 empty stalls somewhere in the on-street system. On the weekend, 73 percent are occupied.
On the peak hour of the weekend, there are still 246 stalls available in the on-street system. Williams said they’ve located them, now they have to say if it is feasible for someone to park there.
The average duration stay on the weekday is 2-hours-46 minutes. The average stay during the weekend was 2-hours-53 minutes, which Williams said the downtown doesn’t need all day, unregulated parking.
“The parking industry says, if you have a high volume retail core, you want to promote and attract high volumes of trips, then your minimum turnover rate should be five. That guarantees the business a high level of turnover,” he said. “You could say, let’s give everybody 1-hour parking. That wouldn’t suit. If would be much more beneficial to businesses in downtown Leavenworth if they were getting 1.37 more cars a day in front of their store.”
Other than four block faces, the downtown core is 85 percent or red from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. on the weekends. However, he said there are still 200 empty stalls.
“On weekends, the occupancy on-street in over 100 percent. Starting at 11:30, 88 percent so we’re already in the red. By 1:30, 104 percent. How can you get to 104? People are parking illegally. They want parking so bad, they’re parking in front of fire hydrants, in front of curb cuts, no parking zones,” Williams said. “We have information about time stays, the number of people parking longer the five hours. We have good information on the off-street system where stalls are empty.”
Williams said they have good information that there are number of people parking longer that five hours. They also have good information there are empty stalls in the off-street system. On the weekdays, half the off-street stalls are empty, which means there are 600-700 stalls in the off-street system, recognizing it is privately controlled.
“On the weekends, it drops, but there are still 400 stalls in the off-street system. That number doesn’t include the 13 lots we saw outside the zone. That is a lot of parking. If you were to multiply the 400 parking stalls by what it cost to build a garage. That is $16 million of value. You should at least try to capture it,” he said.
Data conclusions
The core zone is heavily utilized on weekdays and weekends. The problem identified is the on-street in the core zone. No limit parking in the core is not consistent with customer need.
“The unlimited parking is creating problems for us, because were over 85 percent. If you were 45 percent occupied, I would say, keep going. There’s no need for timed parking. No one will be denied a stall,” Williams said. “Can we say to ourselves, if visitors and customers are our priority, that aren’t some conflicts between visitors and customers in other uses.”
Williams said they should at least consider time limits in the core zone. The opportunity for shared parking should be pursued. He felt there is a lot of opportunity out there that is empty.
“It may not be available, it may never become available, but we need to look at it and pursue it first.
My mentor in parking said fill up what you have first. There are 401 empty stalls on peak weekends. That is the lowest number of empty stalls with a value of $12-15 million,” Williams said.
Remote lots and shuttles are positive. He noted the city is working with Link now. They may need a system of shuttles for employees so they can park remotely.
“Some cities we’ve working with, in their path they have with their downtown business association, parking is a condition of employment. Here’s your salary, vacation, health benefits, here’s where you park. If you don’t, it’s a disciplinary event,” he said. “It’s something to think about. If employers are not working with us, it’s not going to work. It’s the employers responsibility in partnership with the city, not the city’s responsibility.”
Williams said to begin planning for future growth. At some point, he said the city will expend all the opportunities and new parking will be necessary.
“We need to start planning now. It’s important to be planning now to determine what funding opportunities there are, sites that would be feasible, how much to build. We need to have all those conversations first,” Williams said. “You can’t step back and say, we’re not going to manage parking. We have parking management plan to get us there.”
In part two, we’ll review some of the public input provided to Williams during the open house on May 2 in Festhalle.
Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.