The city’s 2011 parking plan announced January 14 had parking going from $1.50 per hour to $2 per hour along 12th Ave and near Swedish Hospital’s Cherry Hill campus. Today, SDOT announced that those plans have been revised, and many of the previously-announced parking rate hikes have been reversed. Parking at 12th and Cherry Hill, will remain at $1.50 per hour.
From SDOT:
The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) today announced modifications to neighborhood on-street parking rates for 2011. Based on a thorough review of the City’s rate-setting approach, rates for 2011 will go up in four neighborhoods, down in 11 neighborhoods and will stay the same in seven others as compared to 2010 rates. This will result in 73 percent of paid spaces having either no change or a rate reduction.
During this critical reevaluation, undertaken at the direction of Mayor McGinn and the Seattle City Council, SDOT reviewed its policy direction, data and methodology for setting rates. The rates announced today (outlined in the attached chart) should allow the City to better achieve its goal of one to two open spaces on average per block.
“We’ve taken a critical second look at our data and methodology for setting parking rates,” said Charles Bookman, SDOT’s director of Traffic Management. “These modifications are a reflection of the mayor’s and City Council’s commitment to data-driven policies to make it more likely for motorists to find an open spot on the street.”
In adopting the 2011 budget, the Seattle City Council directed SDOT to set rates to achieve an average of one or two available spaces per block in each neighborhood. During its review process, the department revised its methodology for achieving such on-street availability to more closely align with this policy direction. Most significantly, SDOT adjusted its target occupancy range to 71 percent to 86 percent, instead of the previously used 58 percent to 78 percent, which better corresponds to the seven parking spaces per block found on average in paid parking neighborhoods. The plan to extend paid parking hours for the nine neighborhoods with active nightlife and high evening parking demand, announced on January 14, remains unchanged.
Starting in early February, the new rates will be rolled out over the course of two months on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis. Later this spring and summer, after the implementation, SDOT will collect parking data to determine how the new rates are altering parking behavior in each Seattle paid-parking neighborhood.
