If you are among those who routinely argue there’s no parking downtown, you’re wrong.
On the final Friday night of the Savannah Music Festival, there were hundreds of folks at the Lucas Theatre for “Stringband Spectacular” and more than a thousand a couple of hours later for Dianne Reeves at Trustees Theater.
In addition to the SMF attendees, downtown was crawling with shoppers, tourists and diners.
Some of those people had arrived in the heart of downtown on foot or on bicycle, but most had parked their cars somewhere. Thousands of people still made it on time to their shows or to their dinner reservations.
We might eventually need additional garage parking, but we sure don’t seem to be in the midst of a crisis right now.
Last Wednesday at 3 p.m., I was driving into the heart of the Historic District on Wheaton Street, which turns into Liberty Street.
After crossing East Broad Street, I saw dozens of available on-street parking spaces on East Liberty. There were fewer empty spaces as I neared Bull Street, but there were ample open spots immediately west of Whitaker Street.
A few minutes later, I counted more than 75 available on-street parking spaces in the Barnard Street corridor between Oglethorpe Avenue and Gaston Street.
This was an ordinary business day. During tourist season. With SCAD in full session.
“But, wait,” some will argue, “I’m not parking way out on Liberty Street if I’m going to Broughton Street.”
Why not? It’s about a third of a mile between Liberty and Broughton, and the walk is one of the most beautiful you’ll find anywhere.
When people complain about the lack of parking in the greater downtown area, they are typically complaining about specific problems.
Almost 100 percent of the time, I can park on the street right in front of my house even though I am just two short blocks from SCAD’s Arnold
Hall. One block closer to the school, however, residential parking conditions were so nightmarish that special policies had to be implemented.
Drivers can find ample on-street parking on Barnard Street south of Oglethorpe Avenue on pretty much any weekday, but then they discover the time limit on most meters is insufficient. So drivers might see lots of empty spaces, but the options are still unsatisfactory.
Take the survey
The story of parking in Savannah is also a story of misplaced expectations on the part of many drivers.
Downtown visitors who only come during high-profile public events will almost certainly struggle to find parking. Those infrequent visitors seem to waste a lot of time searching for on-street parking in areas where they are unlikely to find any — like around Johnson and Ellis squares — rather than simply going to where the spaces are.
The CORE MPO, through the Chatham County-Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission, and the city of Savannah are in the midst of creating a strategic plan for parking and mobility called Parking Matters.
There is a survey on the city’s website (http://savannahga.gov/index.aspx?NID=1697), but many respondents will be frustrated by the questions because they do not capture the subtle and specific parking problems that we face.
Also, the study area extends south to 37th Street and west to Boundary Street. The parking conditions vary so much from neighborhood to neighborhood that it’s impossible to generalize.
Still, the questions should produce some useful data, so I’d suggest giving the survey a whirl.
And there’s a community open house about downtown parking from 4 to 7 p.m. April 14 at the Coastal Georgia Center, 305 Fahm Street.
Finding a balance
I’ve written about downtown parking in dozens of City Talk columns, and I find myself returning to a couple of key themes — ones that some readers find contradictory.
We need to do everything possible to maximize the use of on-street parking spaces. It’s absurd that the spaces on Barnard Street, for example, are so poorly utilized on weekdays. That’s an issue of pricing, timing and marketing.
It’s also absurd that the federal government continues to restrict parking around office buildings near Telfair Square. Those security measures were taken after 9/11, and they’ve cost area merchants millions of dollars in lost business.
Not only do on-street spaces make nearby properties more valuable, they also provide a safety buffer between sidewalks and lanes of traffic. Yes, we speeded up Bay Street traffic when we removed on-street spaces many years ago, but we hurt businesses on the strip and created perilous conditions with pedestrians just a few feet away from fast-moving cars.
As we’re trying to maximize the availability of on-street spaces, we can also try to maximize downtown accessibility for those on bikes, on foot and on transit. The two policies are not mutually exclusive.
There are trade-offs here and there, like taking a parking space and installing parking for multiple bicycles. Or creating a dedicated bicycle lane instead of a lane of parking.
At the end of the day, it’s a question of maximizing quality of life for residents and maximizing economic vitality for businesses. And it’s a question of finding the right balance when competing interests cannot be reconciled.
City Talk appears every Tuesday and Sunday. Bill Dawers can be reached via billdawers@comcast.net. Send mail to 10 East 32nd St., Savannah, Ga. 31401.
By Bill Dawers