Given Midtown's bustling nightlife scene, this should have been done a long time ago:
A series of proposals from ParkHouston could lead to more metered parking throughout Midtown, extended meter hours and a requirement for some residents to purchase permits to park in front of their homes. Midtown would have what's called a Parking Benefit District that would eventually take portions of the revenue generated and use it on public projects of all kinds.
The city is taking public comment on the proposals, which ends Jan. 15. Anyone wishing to submit a comment can visit the ParkHouston website.
On most city streets with meters, paid parking ends at 6 p.m., meaning drivers are able to park for free just about anywhere in the evening hours. Meters in and along Washington Avenue, the River Oaks shopping center on West Gray, Memorial Park and Rice Village operate past 6 p.m. Parking lots underneath downtown's elevated freeways are also metered until 11 p.m.
In September, the city quietly extended metered parking hours to midnight on a block of streets in Midtown bordered by Fannin, Pierce, Bagby and Tuam streets. The recent change came after a city study conducted in February found that street parking was booming well into the night, according to Maria Irshad, assistant director of ParkHouston.
The area within these streets constitutes the epicenter of Midtown's bar and club scene, and traffic within this area can actually become very congested on Friday and Saturday nights as people search for places to park (although, in my experience, Uber and Lyft drivers stopping in the middle of the street to pick up and drop off passengers probably contributes to congestion as well.) The aim of this change is to increase parking space turnover as well as generate some revenue:
ParkHouston theorizes that by metering parking to midnight on Midtown's most popular streets, it will reduce the number of cars circling for free parking, encourage people to take other modes of transportation and also increase the number of carpools.
If created, the Midtown Parking Benefit District will take 60 percent of the meters' net revenue after 6 p.m. A board of residents and business owners will decide how to allocate the funds, which can be used for a variety of purposes from increasing pedestrian safety with crosswalks or commissioning public art. A parking benefit district along Washington Avenue created in 2013 used funds to create custom bike racks and pays for off-duty Houston police officers to patrol the roadway, Irshad said. Projects must be made on public property, but the scope is otherwise limited to the imagination of the board.
Extending metered parking hours into the evenings in busy nightlife districts and directing those parking revenues into parking benefit districts (as opposed to just dumping all parking revenues into the city's general fund) are two recommendations that UCLA professor and The High Cost of Free Parking author Donald Shoup put forth when he spoke at a Kinder Institute webinar at the beginning of the month.
Once this is implemented, I'm sure there will be some whining from Midtown clubgoers who now have to pay for on-street parking that was formerly free. I feel no sympathy for them. Nobody is entitled to a free parking space, especially in places such as Midtown where it is in high demand. Furthermore, it's never been easier to pay for parking: the electronic meters accept credit cards so you don't have to mess with change anymore, and there's also a parking app that works not just in Houston but in hundreds of other cities and towns in the United States.
I'm a bit more sympathetic to Midtown residents who might be required to purchase annual permits to park along streets affected by the new rules: unlike visitors, they're not parking on Midtown streets by choice. If I'm reading the article correctly, however, annual permits for residents are not going to be part of the initial roll-out.
On-street parking is a valuable asset, day or night. These new market-based parking rules for Midtown are a no-brainer.
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