City Councilors met last week for a presentation on the ongoing Newton Centre parking strategy. You can read the committee report and see the presentation here. And you can download the draft study here.
The report contains lots of data and analysis and suggestions (while stressing that “any ideas presented in this document will need further vetting before implementation.”) I recommend reading at least the executive summary on the draft study (and the chart on page 13), where you will find a proposal to eliminate all time limited meters but varying the cost per hour depending on desirable location and time spent in any given spot.
In addition the consultants are recommending against building a parking garage, saying there are 1,000-plus empty parking spaces available in the Newton Centre at the busiest times of day.
The consultants are looking for the public’s feedback here prior to Jan. 25.
Affordable Housing like they are doing on Austin Street in Newtonville. Especially if the parking lots are being underutilized 1000 spots at a busy time – They can make more money from housing and taxes than from collecting parking fees. And the T is right there – great for commuters. They have everything very close and Wegmans isn’t that far for food shopping. And it will increase the amount of Affordable Housing for the city.
Basically I agree with all of the recommendations. Eliminating many time-limit spaces, installing computerized parking meters that allow time to be added by a smartphone, improving pedestrian safety and walking ease between streets, changing the hyper ticketing practices, the signage and adding long term parking.
The statement including “1000 underused spaces” is quite misleading. It meant one thing in 2013 and another in 2015.
The final draft (2) has many confusing issues that make understanding the methods difficult, at least for me.
In the chart on p. 13, Newton Centre is divided into Core, Secondary and Surrounding Zone parking. (This includes on-street and off-street parking and private lots.)
“The 2015 effort expands the area of focus used in the 2013 Parking Study by including privately owned parking areas and neighboring side streets” and adds ~1/4 mile perimeter.
In a chart on p. 17 the 2013 study area (including the 2015 core and surrounding zones) is differentiated from the 2015 area studied.
According to the 2015 study, “some areas, in particular Union Street, the on-street spaces are nearly 100% full all day (Figure 2-2).” In the 2013 study “on-street parking was operating under capacity with exception of Union Street.” But it agrees that “Over 1000 parking spaces exist in Newton Centre but go unused – at the busiest time of day.” At this point there is no explanation that in 2015 the unused spaces are in private parking lots and surrounding neighborhood streets unlike the earlier study.
Which of the following are correct.
On page 21 the core zone map (which seems to include the secondary zone) includes 347 spaces.
In a chart on p. 27 of on-street and off-street parking, the core zone has 247 spaces with 92% occupancy, the secondary zone has 78 spaces with 82% occupancy and the surrounding zone area has 792 spaces with 26% occupancy at peak occupancy times, equaling 1,117 parking spaces.
In Appendix A
There are 2,581 total parking spaces in the entire study area, with 1,117 on-street and 1,464 off-street in parking lots. 57% of the inventory is in off-street parking lots
1,075 parking spaces are restricted use (non-public)
1,534 parking spaces are city-owned 1,047 parking spaces are in non city-owned lots (private)
The main takeaway I have from this is that Pelham and Pleasant Street municipal lots are chronically under-utilized.
Therefore the fastest, easiest, cheapest and most pragmatic fix (if you believe that the Newton Centre parking situation is ‘broken’, and I’m not sure I agree) is to do something that converts these lots, just on the other side of Centre Street, from being considered “secondary” to a “primary” parking option.
The only other thing that doesn’t look right is reversing the direction of Langley Road. As our traffic dept. (re-)learns the hard way, the streets in Newton are set up in a particular way for a reason. The Langley-Beacon-Centre triangle is used by a fair amount of traffic as a giant rotary: Reversing Langley will disrupt that traffic flow, and that traffic may end up flowing in some other (and more disruptive) way.
A point made at the meeting I attended and reiterated in the report is that traffic signs in and around the Centre are too numerous and confusing, and are focused on telling drivers when and where they can’t park, not helping them find places where they can. Small changes like rationalizing signs are certainly worth trying. I too am skeptical about larger changes, though, especially switching directionality on a busy street like Langley, changing what is now a right-turn loop into a more difficult left-hand one. Of course people can learn new traffic patterns, but the learning curve could be a long and potentially dangerous one.