You may remember back in September Harrisonburg asked for your input on a survey about parking downtown. The city worked with a consultant to evaluate current parking capacity and future needs for pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure and public transportation.
The consultant’s recommendations are in, and the city is looking for your input again. They have posted the materials from the public meetings held on January 22, and are looking for feedback on the recommendations which include:
- Revise code to assure adequate parking for new development
- Improve current facility maintenance and management practices
- Invest in wayfinding and technology systems to help locate open parking
- Introduce new public parking capacity
- Promote shared parking to maximize the use of existing assets
- Simplify parking time limits
- Invest in new technologies to improve operations
- Support use of alternative modes of transportation
- Investigate fee‐for‐use (e.g. “paid” parking) as a mechanism for influencing behavior
Here is the consultant’s presentation and the slide headings follow the recommendations above if you’d like to jump to a specific one.
And here are the display boards with detailed images describing some of the data collection results and recommendations.
Lastly, here’s the survey and it is open until Friday February 7.
We applaud the city for this data-driven process with a lot of opportunity for public input. Additionally, we are happy to see recommendations that will attempt to fully use the existing parking resources as well as expand pedestrian access to downtown. Hopefully these recommendations will allow downtown to flourish while still maintaining adequate parking and leaving prime locations available for a vibrant urban community – businesses, restaurants, urban living, bicycles, and pedestrians.