The Carrboro Town Council heard an update on public parking and provided feedback on their policy preferences for future projects at its latest business meeting. Since approving a two-hour parking limit in March 2023 and an enforcement budget in June 2023, Tuesday’s meeting was the first in which the newly elected council has discussed public parking.
Economic Development Director Jon Hartman-Brown said studies found a majority of cars parked in public parking lots exceed the two-hour time limit and Carrboro is one of only a few municipalities that does not charge for parking. The studies also concluded the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) parking violation fee is too low. Currently at $50, the study said fees from $200-250 are more typical.
Hartman-Brown said Carrboro is working with Chapel Hill’s parking division to ensure that Carrboro’s policies are well aligned with Chapel Hill’s.
“We ended up pausing our progress on this,” said Hartman-Brown, “due to Carr Mill Mall towing incidents. We felt like this was probably not the best time to be continuing to move forward with paid parking or parking enforcement.”
Despite the town’s paused progress, the town staff continued researching technical feasibility and best approaches for purchasing hardware and software necessary for implementing paid-parking services.
“At the end of the day,” Hartman-Brown continued, “we found the best approach was, we need to buy our own software and hardware. There was really no easy way to make our [Carrboro and Chapel Hill] systems talk to each other.”
Mayor Pro Tempore Danny Nowell said though he supports a free 30 minute parking window, and it could resolve some equity concerns surrounding paid parking, his preference is to minimize the application of those timeframes. He said his “guiding north star” is for all public parking spots to be paid spots.
“On the one hand,” Nowell continued, “we have some of the most valuable real estate in the state, and cars are sitting there free, and a bunch of our downtown is a service parking lot. So, we want to minimize the extent to which we are engaging in a money-suck, and we want to buffer our budget with this really valuable resource which is currently not working for us, but it’s also climate policy.”
Council Member Jason Merrill said he agreed with Nowell’s comments. He also said he did not like the designs of the wayfinding signs that will be built to help people find parking. The town developed the designs, which were presented at the meeting, in 2017. He joked that one of the signs looks like it directs people to where someone should park their frog instead of a vehicle.
“I would like for the form to be as close to Chapel Hill’s as possible for consistency’s sake,” said Merrill. “I love the colors. We can have frogs on there, you can park your frogs here. But again, people coming in from out of town, it should be as obvious as possible. You can’t make things too obvious.”
“I’m reluctant to say anything at all,” Merrill continued, “because I don’t want to create a whole bunch of work, and I do want to get it done quickly, but I want it to be effective. I don’t want to do our one parking wayfinding thing for the next twenty years and have it be a head scratcher.”
Screenshot of Carrboro wayfinding designs from the Carrboro Town Council meeting on March 6
Council Member Randee Haven-O’Donnell disagreed with Nowell on the issue of a short free parking window. They said they believe it is important to have a longer period during which people can park for free.
“One of the things that we’re not talking about here,” said Haven-O’Donnell, “and we don’t have any demographics, and we don’t have any data, is who is burdened? I want to ask that question because not everyone in Carrboro is able-bodied, and I want to avoid any sense of ableism or ageism in this decision. If we go with this, the way it is, it smacks of ageism and ableism without knowing who is actually burdened.”
“In addition to that,” continued Haven-O’Donnell, “I haven’t heard any conversation about where the interface is between the different kinds of mobility, and our interest is, said over a year or so ago, in having the library be a possible bike-share space, and possibl[y] having the trike bikes. You know, that’s been lost, and I think that’s really important because that’s part of what would get some people to park in a deck and get around otherwise if they can’t bike on a two-wheel bike. We need to open up that conversation and additionally find out are there other aspects of this that we’ve not considered because we’re sitting here ableistic. I want to hear from the people who have to navigate this system who need alternatives.”
Council Member Catherine Fray said they support adding paid parking to all public lots in Carrboro. They addressed Haven-O’Donnell’s comments regarding building more structured parking by pointing to Carrboro’s 203 Project which includes a parking deck with 171 vehicle parking spaces and 70 bike parking spots.
“You were talking about could we perhaps build structured parking,” Fray said. “I would say: we just did. So, while we could expand on that idea in the future, I think we now have, we do have a law that is going to work in that way as well.”
To watch the full video of the meeting, click here.
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