More on parking in Cedar Rapids

When I went to the recent "Parking in Action" round table discussion, put on by the Cedar Rapids Downtown District, I went in thinking the parking system in Cedar Rapids was a bloated system with too many decrepit parking garages serving a an audience who was unwilling to walk a block to save their lives.

What I saw and heard over the next hour and a half made me believe the parking system is part of a poorly organized system, yet it is positioned to be a strong catalyst for downtown development. And most of the people in Cedar Rapids are still unwilling to walk a block to save their lives.

In a tone very similar to the recent transit open houses, much of the message was about what we can do with an underfunded system in the meantime, and what it could turn into if done correctly.

Prior to the formal presentation, the question was posed to each table to list the top three concerns with the parking system as it stands today. The answers from approximately 20 tables were pretty uniform; price, location and ease of use. A few unique responses were security concerns with the parkades, the appearance/maintainable of the parkades, and the lack of access control leading to permit holders not having spaces on night and weekends.

The presentation by Dennis Burns, vice president of parking consultant Carl Walker Inc. (video of the presentation), contained images from cities where parking ramps are designed to reflect the values of the communities they were built in, subterranean lots to allow parks to be build at street level, open and inviting parking garages and multi-use buildings incorporating commercial spaces at street level and parking and residential above.

Burns talked about many ideas which could be incorporated into Cedar Rapids' current parking system to encourage people to use it as it exists today. These ideas included new and simplified signage and maps to make it easier for visitors to know where to park and where to go, a policy of "first hour free" to encourage use of the off street parking system and remove the requirement for parking validation.

Other slides focused on new technology which could be used to combine multiple parking meters into a single point of use which would accept credit and debit cards. Burns stated that in other cities where the only change was the addition of a system which accepted credit and debit cards resulted in an increase of revenue 15-20% solely due to the increased ease of use.

The general theme carried throughout the presentation was the organization necessary to have a strong parking system. In many cities the parking system uses the profits generated from the on-street parking to subsidize the structured parking as well as to reinvest into improving the surrounding streetscapes. These improved areas result in more people visiting the downtown therefore increasing the revenues for the parking system.

While the parking system in Cedar Rapids is not organized to be able to do this (at least not currently) we have one distinct advantage, the city of Cedar Rapids owns ~78% of all the parking in the downtown area (which is huge compared to other cities).

One thing I thought was made clear during this presentation, if Ron Corbet really wants to revitalize the downtown area of Cedar Rapids, eliminating all parking fees for ten years isn't really an option, this would simply result in the parkades to fall further into disrepair and won't allow the city to advance our parking system for another ten years.