City Council Wants to Hear From You on Proposed Changes to Residential Parking Zone Program

Next week, the City Council’s Transportation Committee will hold a public hearing on proposed changes to the Restricted Parking Zone program (AKA Residential Parking Zone program) which was developed to help ease parking congestion in residential neighborhoods. The meeting will take place at City Hall (600 4th Ave.) in City Council Chambers (2nd floor) Wed., May 27, at 5:30 pm, where the committee will take public comment on the proposed amendments:

• Manage parking demand by limiting permit sales to 4 per household with the exception for adult family homes, assisted living facilities, domestic violence shelters, and permitted congregate residences

• Modify the business pilot to explicitly limit it to the seven Central Link Light Rail Stations and not allow its expansion to other RPZs; to establish a trigger point beyond which permits for non-residents would cease to be issued in order to keep parking demand from exceeding available on-street parking spaces in residential areas; and to set a time frame for evaluating and deciding whether or not to continue the pilot

• Change the threshold for establishing an RPZ to 35% non-resident vehicles to favor parking for residents while still allowing for an increase in visitor parking

• Not approve the Executive’s limit on major institution support for RPZ permits costs for affected households; instead leave in place determination of level of major institution support for RPZ permits to negotiations as part of the master plan update process

• Modify the Executive’s proposal to include additional public involvement approaches

• Add a requirement for a public hearing prior to decisions on RPZs by the Seattle Department of Transportation Director; and clarify that appeals process applies to establishing, modifying, or dissolving an RPZ

• Not approve the Executive’s limit on major institution support for RPZ permits costs for affected households; instead leave in place determination of major institute support for RPZ permits to the negotiation process as part of the master plan update process

• Create a new Resolution stating Council’s intent to have the Seattle Department of Transportation report back to City Council on January 1, 2011 on how the changes to the RPZ program have affected neighborhoods and what additional tools are available to manage RPZ permits

If all that gives you a headache, you might hop over to Smarter Neighbors where they’re breaking it down for the rest of us:

Great! If the city has its way and limits the number of Residential Parking Zone permits each household can obtain to just eight, where am I going to park my five broken-down Celicas, four pickups, three friend’s cars, two daily drivers, and my huge moldy RV?!? Huh? Tell we me where?!?

On the other hand, some are asking:

Is the city using what seems like a no-brainer reduction in the number of permits issued to each household as an excuse to slide through other changes that would negatively impact neighborhoods?

The counterpoint to the city’s message has been that the city isn’t just making changes to this one point, but they are completely restructuring the whole Residential Parking Zone program. And critics charge that the impact will be that these residential spaces are going to be replaced by commercial parking (so there’s really no reduction in car traffic) that residents will lose their ability to help setup the boundaries of these Residential Parking Zones, and that the city is making it harder to establish new Residential Parking Zones in the future. Read more.

What do you think?

Photo/do communications, inc.

Tagged as: Big News, RPZ