Carrboro Town Council recently met to review community feedback on a potential paid parking plan. It explores downtown public parking management options and opportunities, and a community survey specifically looked for opinions on potential parking rates and time limits.
At Thursday’s meeting, Council Member Catherine Fray said if you ask the community if they would like to pay for something that was previously free, you only get one answer. In general, the public said, ‘no.’
“But sometimes we hear that parking is a problem in that there is not enough parking, that people have trouble finding parking,” they said. “It’s interesting how much of that evaporates when you are asking the same set of people, ‘would you like to have more open spaces,’ because that’s how that’s the only way that you can make them.”
The council directed town staff to draft the ordinance in March with plans to revisit it in June, but the meeting was tabled due to time restrictions. Over the summer, the town met with stakeholders and collected responses from the community regarding the plan.
The survey, which garnered about 1,700 responses, highlighted the community’s opposition to paid parking and time limit restrictions. But Fray explained that Carrboro is not going to build new parking spaces because there’s nowhere to put them.
Mayor Pro Tem Danny Nowell stressed the town is working to consider how to best serve the community and no decisions are being made at this time.
“It’s been really interesting to see how totally this process reflects how poorly our intent has been communicated,” Nowell said. “Not by our communication staff, but just as leaders facing a community with a difficult policy change. The sort of chasm we have to cross to communicate why we would consider something that we knew would be unpopular.”
Nowell said a driving reason for the ordinance is to help small businesses. He explained there is currently a potential for lost revenue because more than 50% of public parking spaces are not turning over within the two hour limit. However, the council member added it’s critical to ensure Carrboro’s workforce is not scared away by a potential paid parking policy.
At the meeting, the council passed a motion to draft a presentation on the feasibility of a leasing program, which could allow local businesses to lease town parking spaces for employees. Fray said it’s an opportunity to shift workers from core downtown lots that are frequently at capacity to outer lots.
“Which currently are never at capacity,” they explained. “And I heard over and over again from folks, saying interestingly, ‘I really would like to know where my workers can park because it’s not a problem for someone to walk a block to get to work. It’s a problem if there’s nowhere for them to go or if they’re in direct competition with my customers.’”
Fray said from town parking studies, it’s clear downtown workers do not know where these public lots are, how to get to them, and that they’re currently free.
Another motion from the council included a plan to draft a report on the feasibility of micro-mobility solutions downtown. To both combat the town’s limited parking and increase vibrancy downtown, survey responders suggested the implementation of a bike-share, electric scooters, and increasing bus frequency in and near downtown.
Carrboro’s Economic Development Director Jon Hartman-Brown said these suggestions would allow for people to park further from downtown, or even access downtown Carrboro if they’re parked in Chapel Hill. Nowell said lessening reliance on cars is another reason for the town’s consideration of a paid parking plan, but he said the town can also do a better job of making it feel good to not need a car in Carrboro.
“I think we need to think about a three-legged stool approach,” he explained. “Which is we need to be creating communities that [are] viable to navigate without cars, I think we need to be investing resources in existing transit and multimodal networks, and I think that we need to be disincentivizing cars. I think if we start by focusing on that third leg we are significantly imperiling our ability to strategically introduce the other two legs.”
The council also emphasized the need to continue working with the local business and Carrboro communities when developing the plan, passing a motion to host a work session on the parking ordinance between now and March 2025. Council Member Fray said the workshop would be an opportunity to gauge community feedback on a more feasible plan before any movement on it occurs.
“Because when we get to the point eventually that [parking] is a problem I would like us to have a draft ordinance that we’ve actually had a chance to workshop instead of lighting everybody on fire again every time that we start to hear that there is an issue with parking,” they said.
Fray said this means if the town ever reaches the point where there’s not enough parking left, there is a plan ready to go.
To view the full meeting, click here.
Featured photo via the Town of Carrboro.
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