Final part of our series about
Columbia's new parking consultant
COLUMBIA, 5/2/11 (Beat Byte) -- From escalating costs
that robbed money from a library in Eugene, Oregon to legal battles in Spokane,
Washington, Walker Parking
Consultants (WPC) has both confronted and engendered various
travails with its one-size-fits-all, more-parking-is-better philosophy.
First hired
in 2009 to design Columbia's eight story downtown garage on 5th and
Walnut, Elgin, Illinois-based WPC was tapped
again for $503,000 to design a second
garage on Short Street.
The 5th and Walnut garage has already emerged as an over-lighted eyesore.
If history is any guide, the Short Street garage may not fair any better.
In Eugene, "costly delays" that instigated mediation
caused a WPC-supervised project to "fall far behind schedule,"
the Eugene
Register-Guard reported. Adding insult to injury, part of the
money to pay for that city's parking garage came from a library fund.
The city of Spokane found itself wrapped in protracted litigation over
WPC parking revenue estimates that proved "$2 million too high," the
Spokesman-Review reported in 2004. "Since it opened in 1999, the
River Park Square parking garage has been unable to generate enough
revenues...to make bond payments and cover expenses. Eventually, bondholders
sued the city, developers, and consultants."
"Downtown parking fixes may make things worse," reads the headline of a 2009
Santa Monica Daily Press story about WPC proposals in that
city "that will eventually make it much more expensive to park
— despite record unemployment and a recession."
The Santa Monica playbook is a mirror image of Columbia's looming
approach: raise hourly rates and expand meter operation hours. The
rate increases Santa Monica saw were startling: daily maximum
rate jumping to $9 from $7; evening rate going up nearly 70%; monthly rates
jumping 40%, from to $82.50 to $121.
"City Council seems to ignore the fact that parking expense is a
factor when deciding where to dine, see a movie or shop," author Bill
Bauer wrote, in a summary that equally applies to Columbia. "There's also the
pressure to stop spending and depart quickly to avoid extra parking fees, which
also reduces revenues."
With the exception of a single Council member, who predicted higher parking
would discourage downtown business, Santa Monica's City Council used "convoluted
logic" to justify WPC's recommendations, Bauer reported. To "stop downtown
employees who hog spaces," for instance, the Council "raised rates for
thousands of minimum wage employees."
"Underpriced parking is subsidizing driving and increasing traffic," said
one Santa Monica Councilman in justification, similar to the nonsense we've
heard here.
If discouraging autos played any role, what in the world are all
those downtown parking garages doing in Columbia? How can you make
the argument that higher parking rates discourage automobile traffic, while at
the same time building for more and more of it?
All photos depict parking garages currently located in downtown Columbia (with another on the way!)
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