The Council meeting on Tuesday night will feature a study session on the Curb Pricing Study recommendations: 10am-8pm in Old Bellevue, Downtown, Wilburton, Spring District, and BelRed (see map on page 48 for actual boundaries; Old Bellevue includes all of Wildwood Dog Park and BelRed is smaller than you’d expect). This proposal does not cover payment for loading zone use, though that’s been talked about in the past.
The new curb pricing plans will completely reshape the city’s experience with parking. If you have your car out overnight, you’ll now be able to leave it until 1pm, though you’ll have to pay the meter starting at 10am. Free parking won’t start until 8pm, since the peak times are lunch and dinner.
It is expected to break even on the $1.6M cost within a year, and $2.3M in annual net revenue thereafter (page 35) can pay for curb enhancements for pedestrians, wayfinding, and ADA on-street parking spots. It should also pay for enhanced enforcement, including occasional enforcement in adjacent RPZs. This is only the city’s portion of the cost, however; as people start trying to find free parking in library, park, mall, and small business lots, adjustments will be needed for enforcement there or to add parking gates.
Page 27 says time limits would be enforced at parks in the downtown area (but there’s no mention of walk-offs). Page 36 does not include these in areas where there would be an hourly parking cost. I am not sure if current park parking utilization rates and park users vs. walk offs were evaluated in the study
When the data was collected to determine the need for curb pricing, around 25% of cars in 2 hr zones were observed to be staying over 3 hours (page 5 of 158). This means that the target occupancy might be reachable with enforcement only, but it is expensive and cannot break even when tickets are only $54. Tickets might need to triple to break even (page 28), and it’s unclear whether these are set by King County and/or will be the same after curb pricing is implemented.
This curb pricing outreach effort was extremely thorough and might be a good example for other city policy changes to follow.
What do you think of this plan? You can email City Council now or come to the meeting this week and speak in the public comment.
Tuesday, December 2nd
City Council, 6pm (link)
There will be 30 minutes for public comment; speaker sign-up starts at noon (link)
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