Could the city be doing away with alternate side parking? Will the snow emergency zone get extended? And will everyone have a 4 hour period of time each week when their parking is restricted? Looks like changes are coming!!
BACKGROUND
You know me, I’m highly critical of stupid parking rules. I can live with parking rules, just not those that require me to pay for street parking and ramp parking and still move my car 5 times in one day when I’m at home!
Yesterday I attended a meeting at was an “notice of quorum” for the city council. The meeting was noticed as follows:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”12″]4:30 PM Notice of Possible Quorum of City of Madison Committee(s)City County Building 210 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Room GR-27
– Snow Emergency Zones & Street Maintenance Meeting
– Several members of the Common Council have been invited to attend a meeting with staff on the city’s snow emergency zones and street maintenance on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 at 4:30 p.m. in Room GR-27, City-County Building.
A possible quorum of the Common Council may be in attendance at this meeting.[/perfectpullquote]
When I showed up there were 7 city staff from parking enforcement, streets and transportation. Apparently this meeting was called because Alder Rummel had been asking about things and more and more people were interests. Alders Ledell Zellers, Allen Arntsen, Zach Wood, Rebecca Kemble, Marsha Rummel, Mike Verveer and Shiva Bidar were all there. Charlie Romines, the Streets Superintendent had a draft of a proposal – this should be emphasized, it was an idea that was being floated – about changing the way we do snow emergency parking. Not at all a done deal. The proposal was emailed to alders. I asked two of them to forward it to me, they didn’t. Hmm. There were also maps of the proposed streets that had parking on one side to be included as well as areas of expansion.
Anyways, there seems to have been a shift in attitude of staff around openly discussing ideas around parking which seems positive. In the past, it was a bit of a non-starter. When Satya and I were on the council we worked with Alder Rummel to make some changes, but it was not easy. This conversation went much better!
DRAFT PROPOSAL
The initial proposal perhaps a little modified by some discussion essentially boils down to this:
- Make the downtown snow emergency zone have some boundaries that are easy to explain to people and expand it. Example districts 2, 4, 5, 6, 12 and 13. Or some other geographical boundary like First St to West High?? (I’m just making these up, fyi. They weren’t actually mentioned in the meeting.)
- In this zone, there would be 4 hours of “Clean Streets, Clean Lakes” or CSCL restrictions. That means that for each side of the street there would be a 4 hour period each week, year round, that residents could not park on the street.
- They would include streets where there’s is only parking on one side of the street. Meaning even E. Gorham and E. Johnson and several other streets would have to alternate side park in a snow emergency and have the once a week 4 hour restriction.
- In the future, consider removing alternate side parking on the periphery of the city entirely and only require it when a snow emergency is called.
- Raise the ticket to the snow emergency price of $60 instead of the alternate side parking violation of $20.
- Change the name when they call a “snow emergency” to something like “winter parking rules”.
- Perhaps have the snow emergency for more than 2 nights to reach the whole city, or call the snow emergency by zones that would be set up.
- This wouldn’t start until next fall.
Alders Arntsen and Bidar both said that when the snow emergency zone was extended to their areas, it was mostly well received. People likes not having to move their cars when they didn’t have to.
WHAT PROBLEMS IS THIS SOLVING?
- People won’t have to move their cars if its not needed, and they will only have to move them when a snow emergency is held.
- People don’t move their cars outside of the snow emergency zone and this may increase the chances of them moving when needed
- People won’t get mad that they are getting tickets for not moving their cars for no reason (it hasn’t snowed).
- The year round 4 hour exemption could be used for leaf and brush pick up, tree planting, stump grubbing, etc as well as snow removal to the curb.
- The zones and boundaries would be easier to understand. Potential zones could be called based on what day your trash is picked up.
- Bike lanes would get snow plowed.
- Sand would be cleaned up before going into the lakes.
- They might not need to call snow emergencies as much if they have the 4 hour window of time for snow clean up.
SOME CONCERNS
- People need to have a place to move their cars to. So they might need to plan a little better for which streets are restricted when.
- This is a big change to include the streets that currently only have parking on one side. This might need to be determined with the alder on a case by case basis instead of a general rule.
- What happens when there is construction in the area, how does that disrupt the plans?
- They couldn’t expand this to all streets in the city all at once, they don’t have the resources, they would need to phase this in.
- This would change how the parking staff are hired.
- What signage would be needed? Could they sticker over some of the signs that are needed?
- How is this going to be communicated to affected people?
- There are some large apartment complexes that have draconian parking restrictions and those need to be considered when restricting street parking or they need to work with those property owners in advance.
WORK IN PROGRESS, NEXT STEPS
The alders in attendance asked that the staff start drafting the ordinance changes that would be needed and make the maps so they can see the one-way streets and areas affected. They will also come up with a communication plan to get feedback from residents that are affected. So look for communications from your alder about how your area might be affected.
I WISH SOMEONE WOULD HAVE ASKED . . .
It’s frustrating sitting in these meetings thinking of all the questions I wish someone would ask. At this meeting I would have asked the following:
- I’ve seen signs that have restrictions 8 – noon, 8:30 – 11, 1:30 – 3, etc. Will all areas be 4 hours and how do they decide if its morning or afternoon? And can we have input into that? (i.e. can severely parking restricted areas have the afternoon hours?!)
- Could the 4 hour restrictions not be by entire area, but varied so there are more parking options?
- Right now my street has the 4 hour restriction year round, where else do they have that? What is the feedback from the people who have these restrictions now and what problems do they see in those areas? (I could name a few – like it sucks when the 4 hour restriction and snow emergency dates don’t line up and everyone has one hour between 7am and 8am to move your car. Apparently they delayed parking enforcement in those areas to allow people to have time to dig out, but that would be better dealt with as a policy, not ad hoc decisions by whomever is in charge at the moment)
- Would they consider looking at the RP3 parking areas and making them larger in some cases to allow for more parking options? (i.e. where I live we can only park in a 12 block area but if they included blocks on the other side of E Washington we would have more options)
- Does this include the parking meter areas?
- Could we look at the hours of the “free ramps” and consider expanding those to encourage more people to park there?
- If the parking restrictions are 8 – noon but the street sweeper comes at 7am or before, why not change either the hours on the sign or when the street sweeper comes?
- What’s their solution for having trash pick up and snow plowing on the same day? How can they avoid having to plow around the garbage cans?
- What happens to areas that have further parking restrictions around schools?
You know me, always full of questions. I’m sure my list isn’t even the complete list of questions, so stay tuned. I’m sure once the ordinances are drafted and it goes through committees there will be plenty of time for discussions and modifications. Of course, that will only happen if you speak up. You know I will! 🙂
