Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Current Events Broad Ripple Parking Garage Looks More Likely
Posted by Austin Considine on Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 2:27 PM
- Image via Wikimedia Commons
- Multi-space, electronic meters like this one in Houston could be in Indianapolis' future. Cops like this one could bust you if you don't use them.
Broad Ripple residents and business owners may finally get what so many of them have wanted — for years if not decades: a parking garage.
As part of the city's next big outsourcing venture, Mayor Greg Ballard has proposed a sweeping upgrade of the Indianapolis parking situation — particularly in the Downtown and Broad Ripple areas, where the demand is highest and parking is often metered.
A group of city officials presented the plan to members of the Broad Ripple Village Association last night, eliciting a mixed reaction.
The plan would effectively outsource management of the city's parking infrastructure to a private company, in what officials hope would be a cost- and revenue-sharing agreement. The winning bidder would shoulder much of the burden for financing and implementing upgrades — like multi-space meters that accept credit cards (and maybe even payment by text) — while keeping some of the profits.
(Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, Michael Huber, noted that parking enforcement was already being handled by a private company.)
City-County Counselor Ryan Vaughn, who represents Broad Ripple, said there was a "very good chance" Broad Ripple could get a parking garage out of it, though he made no promises yet. "My support (for the citywide upgrade) will be contingent upon a solution for Broad Ripple," he said.
Ideally, Vaughn said, the deal would go forward without the parking garage as a condition: red tape like site-finding and permitting could tie-up the entire process.
Vaughn said he hoped the funding for a garage could be allocated up-front as part of the winning company's cost contributions — money that could then be spent locally to develop the garage at the neighborhood's own pace and discretion.
What also remains to be seen is whether or not some of the other wishes of Broad Ripple business owners are taken into full consideration.
Huber said the strategies being discussed to alleviate the Village's parking woes included increased enforcement of parking time limits. Some metered spaces around Indianapolis are technically available for a limited time for any individual car — say, for two hours. But because the city's meters are basic change meters, a driver can usually keep feeding the meter indefinitely.
In other cities, a parking violations officer may walk around and chalk the tires of cars to keep track of how long a space is being used. Huber said Indianapolis hasn't had the resources for real enforcement. Better enforcement could, theoretically, keep cars moving in and out of areas like Broad Ripple, freeing up spaces.
But business owners at the meeting last night raised concerns about the strategy. Shoppers in Broad Ripple, some noted, often park their cars and spend the afternoon walking around from shop to restaurant to cafe to shop.
"We are a village," one woman said, whose family has owned and operated a business in Broad Ripple for some 30 years. "We are proud of the fact that we are a walking community." She and others feared increased time limit enforcement could drive away customers who prefer to hang out for the day.
Another woman, who lives near the main strip, worried that increased enforcement could drive even more visitors to park in front of surrounding homes like hers, driving up the potential for crime, drunkenness and accidents in her own front yard.
By law, a large portion of the parking revenue collected in a given neighborhood — including meter money and violation fines — is supposed to return directly to the neighborhood for infrastructure improvements. Huber noted that, with the current, outdated system of coin-fed meters, it was close to impossible to track how much money any single area generated. Electronic, multi-space meters, he argued, could help that revenue to be better tracked.
As several in attendance pointed out, however, meters today are non-operational on evenings and weekends — precisely when Broad Ripple is busiest. Greater attention to revenue tracking wouldn't amount to much, they rightly argued, unless metered hours were expanded.
Selfishly, for those of us who are broke and often have to pay for parking, some of these latter solutions (greater enforcement, extended hours) sound like a real drag. We'll see what the city and Broad Ripple decide.
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Broadripple also needs more bicycle parking areas, whether it be racks, ports, or even a bicycle garage that could be joined as part of the auto garage.
I would very much like to see space to store bicycles in any new auto garage be a mandatory condition of any proposal, whether for downtown for
Broadripple. More bicycle parking would also alleviate some of the car traffic and parking concerns.
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