Sunday, June 07, 2009
The phantom parking shortage
Christian Trejbal
Recent columns
- Voters have only themselves to blame
- Money flows freely to local candidates
- Candidates contemplate a little big-box store
- Don't roll over for Sam's Club
From the RoundTable blog
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about renovations planned for the Blacksburg Farmers Market that would remove 19 parking spaces from the nearby lot. I argued it was no great loss.
Many readers did not agree. In e-mails and comments on our blog, they said parking downtown is nigh impossible and the last thing the town should do is cover some with the Farmers Market and a pocket park.
Yet neither they nor I had any hard data. So I spoke to residents, town staff, council members and business owners to get a sense of whether a downtown parking problem really exits.
"There's plenty of parking. There are times of day when it might be harder than others, but there is parking," said Nancy Willoughby, who owns the downtown shop Fringe Benefit and is a longtime member of the Downtown Merchants of Blacksburg.
People see the empty storefronts and want an explanation. Parking is a convenient excuse, a way to blame something.
"It's an easier thing to say about downtown," Willoughby said, "but it's just been a misconception."
Vice Mayor Leslie Hager-Smith shares that view. "There is a vaguely felt but poorly supported perception that it's hard to park," she wrote in an e-mail.
The proof is in the numbers. The most recent tally anyone at Town Hall could find came from 2001. There were about 665 public spaces. Since then, the Kent Square Parking Garage has opened, adding 383 spots.
Town officials say few if any spots have been lost to construction or anything else over the last eight years. That means motorists have more than 1,000 public parking spots from which to choose.
Head downtown at lunchtime or in the evening, especially when Virginia Tech is in session, and it can be challenging to find a spot if you only drive the Main-Roanoke-Draper-College loop. Those willing to walk a block or two easily find a spot.
People are too accustomed to parking with their destination in view. They will happily walk all the way across a WalMart parking lot because they can see where they are going, but don't ask them to walk half as far around a corner.
Jack Davis, dean of Tech's College of Architecture and Urban Studies, superimposed a map of the Christiansburg Wal-Mart property over downtown Blacksburg, both at the same scale. The walk from Kent Square to most of downtown is shorter than from many Wal-Mart parking spaces to the interior parts of the big box.
Kent Square fills for big events such as Virginia Tech football games, Stepping Out and the upcoming (June 20) Summer Solstice Fest. According to Ben Hoffman, who manages the garage, the rest of the time parking there is plentiful and cheap -- $3 max per day but sometimes free.
There is always Church Street, too, and the secret public lot behind the post office that has a walkway to Main Street. It is secret only in the sense that few people realize it is there.
Then there is my favorite public lot that no one uses. I won't tell where that one is.
Councilwoman Susan Anderson, who chairs the Downtown Revitalization Committee, said they are working on changing the public parking perception.
"Our committee is interested in making the public more aware of parking possibilities," she said.
One change they have proposed is increasing the number of short-term parking spaces, where cars may sit only for 10 minutes.
"We want to make it as easy as possible for folks who want to just pop in somewhere, do some business and leave quickly to have no problem with parking," Anderson said.
Last week, the Traffic Committee endorsed the idea, so new signs should appear soon.
Anderson's committee also hopes to educate residents and visitors about their options. That could take the form of better signs, parking maps, information on the Web site and so on. They are still working out the details.
And who knows? If people start walking around downtown, they might discover everything they have been missing.
