To say that parking in downtown San Antonio is currently a dysfunctional mess would be a polite understatement.
With all due apologies to the hardworking folks who establish and enforce parking policies, it seems like downtown has become a sea of signs featuring a big red “NO.”
However, there is hope on the horizon. According to District 1 Councilman Diego Bernal, “We realize we need an aggressive, innovative approach to parking.”
Over the last three decades, entire blocks of parking meters were stripped away to be replaced by loading zones or no parking whatsoever – two prime examples are Nueva Street next to La Villita, and Market Street across from the Convention Center.
There were logical reasons for doing so, but was the solution worse than the original problem?
Yes, there are surface parking lots and parking garages available, and Bernal points out the relative affordability of city-owned garages.
“City parking lots aren’t full, but they have reasonable rates,” he said.
Why? Because it’s human nature to want to park on the street, as cheaply as possible.
When events do occur downtown, parking in lots or garages can be expensive. At the Asian Festival, it cost $11 to park at the Institute of Texan Cultures, while admission was only $10. The byproduct of aggressive prices like these is that it encourages people to park in nearby neighborhoods, which causes a hue and cry among residents of those areas.
So what’s the solution to all of these problems? In the words of Lavaca resident Michael Berrier, “Anyone who thinks they have the answer doesn’t know what they’re talking about…but we need the answer.”
The urban parking discussion can be parsed into issues affecting the central business district (CBD) and those of the surrounding neighborhoods.
In the CBD, the problem centers around overzealous parking restrictions that in some cases have led to desolate urban canyons.
In the neighborhoods, it’s the dynamic tension between homeowners versus event visitors and daytime workers.
As demonstrated by Robert Rivard’s recent piece about the permit parking pilot project in his soon-to-be neighborhood, the issue of who gets to park in the street in front of one’s home is a touchy subject.
On the most elemental level, the answer is that they are public streets, and anyone has the right to park there. But it isn’t that simple…
Inner-city homes were mostly built during the infancy of the automotive era. It wasn’t until the 1950s that families started owning two or more cars. Ample parking was not a priority when these homes were built. Inner-city lots are smaller (50 feet by 150 feet on average), and driveways tend to be narrow. Proximity to the central business district – being able to walk to work or local businesses – took precedence over everything else. Fast forward to the 21st century: many families own multiple cars and often not enough driveway space to park them.
And so it becomes a perfect storm. Homeowners want to park in front of their houses. Suburbanites going to events at the Alamodome or First Friday prefer to park nearby without paying usurious rates. Workers at local businesses need a place to park. Everyone ends up frustrated with everyone else. And the solutions are less than elegant.
In the Lavaca neighborhood, the solution has been to install signs that say “No Parking 2 Hours Before Events.” A recent example is the Asian Festival. Upon leaving this event, I witnessed parking enforcement officers out and about, with plenty of opportunities to write tickets.
Not only were people parking in the two-hour restriction zones, they were also ignoring “No Parking Anytime” signs. According to residents, cars have blocked driveways on occasion.
People can be surprisingly passionate about on-street parking. According to Berrier, an argument over a public parking spot in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood led to a fatal shooting. To prevent future conflict, permit parking was introduced to the area soon thereafter.
Then there’s the central business district. In past years, available on-street parking was much more abundant than it is today. Why? Business owners and other special interests have requested – and received – loading zone designations. This is understandable given the plethora of delivery trucks that swarm through the CBD during the day.
But is it permissible to park in a loading zone at night, after 6 p.m.? Most people don’t know the answer, including Councilman Bernal and the people I talked to at the Center City Development Office (CCDO), so I did a little research. It turns out the answer is yes. Unless the loading zone is indicated as “Day and Night,” it is permissible to park in those spaces after hours.
But this fact is a well-kept secret, and will likely remain so despite this article. To encourage after-hours parking, I would like to make a modest proposal. It’s self-explanatory:
Another issue is the plethora of no-parking zones in the fringes of the CBD. Perhaps they made sense 40 or 50 years ago when downtown was a vibrant retail center.
But today, vast swaths of streets such as North Main and North Flores resemble deserted urban canyons.
Four lanes of parking-free zones to accommodate traffic that doesn’t exist, except for the infamous “15-minute rush hour” downtown San Antonio is known for.
According to CCDO Assistant Director Colleen Swain, change is coming soon.
“We are working on adjusting parking zones … to add additional parking,” she said.
There are areas in which parking meters exist amongst blocks of vacant buildings. The currently deserted portion of the Broadway corridor is an example.
Until recently, nobody has thought to eliminate them to help spur redevelopment.
According to Swain and Wright, this should be changing soon as well.
Privately owned surface parking lots are generally pieces of land awaiting development. But what will happen when these private lots dwindle in number as they are developed?
“We’re looking at a variety of options,” said Bernal. Possibilities include public/private partnerships to incorporate parking garages in new buildings.
Even more puzzling is the presence of no parking zones that have no apparent reason to exist.
Examples in the Lavaca neighborhood include the street in front of SAISD administrative offices and next to the United Way building. In the case of SAISD, it merely serves to encourage visitors to the school district offices to park in front of residents’ homes. In the case of the United Way building, it denies parking spaces for those who seek to visit local businesses.
There are certain portions of the CBD that require severe parking restrictions. Many downtown streets are little more than glorified alleys along which hotels and restaurants have popped up in recent years. It can be entertaining to watch delivery trucks try to navigate narrow streets while visitors hurriedly unload their cars in front of boutique hotels.
The Home2 Suites Hilton at 603 Navarro St. opens directly on to the west sidewalk for arriving and departing guests, delivery trucks, and valet parking. Morning commuting traffic forms a bottleneck as drivers stop and then merge into the right lane. This also occurs on North St. Mary’s Street next to the Homewood Suites. Anecdotal sources say some valets leave cars standing for an extended period of time.
To exacerbate the matter, delivery trucks have grown in size over the decades. Perhaps vendors should be restricted to using large vans instead of tractor trailers to make deliveries in the CBD.
Houston Street is another point of pain for those venturing downtown. Parking kiosks dot passenger loading zones where fleet-footed valets hustle cars off to nearby parking garages.
However, none of the businesses actually “own” these zones, which generally have a 15-minute time limit. According to CCDO Special Projects Manager Megan Wright, “Valet operators may ask you to move, but you don’t have to.”
“We want to encourage retail on Houston,” Swain said. “It’s important for retail to have at least some on-street parking.”
[Read more: Pop-Up Success: Hope for Houston Street?]
Bernal clarifies this point: “Experience has been that you can park right in front of your destination, but that isn’t true of any downtown.”
Or, as one local (but anonymous) pundit puts it, “There are too many people, and they’re all trying to park in the same spot.”
There is, of course, Downtown Tuesday that provides free parking in city lots and meters from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. – but it’s just that, Tuesday.
Hotels and other buildings in the CBD have been allowed to be built without adequate visitor drop-off areas. When a tour bus pulls up in front of the Holiday Inn on North St. Mary’s Street, gridlock ensues. Sundays along that strip can be a nightmare before, during and after services at St. Mary’s Catholic Church.
Some say the VIA Modern Streetcar may alleviate some of this congestion. “The streetcar plan will build to ‘ultimate configuration.’ The proposal is to take the west lane and use it for valet parking and drop-off,” Wright said.
The streetcar tracks will run in current center lane, which can also be used by cars. The left lane will be a vehicle lane, without any drop-off area.
It’s obvious to even the casual observer that parking restrictions in downtown San Antonio have emerged in a haphazard fashion. But according to all indications, this will change soon. “As downtown develops, we recognize we need a grand parking plan, and that’s on our to-do list for 2014,” says Bernal.”Parking is part of the 2012 bond, as well as walkability.”
According to the CCDO, the central business district street upgrades are in the planning phase, which is about 30-40 percent complete. “We have to do something quick, soon, and it has to work,” Bernal said.
For surrounding neighborhoods, however, it’s a thorny issue that will likely persist for some time to come.
“There are choices you can make, and there are the right choices,” said Barrier. “They all have upsides and downsides.”
*Featured/top image: “Emergency Restrictions” exist throughout the CBD including this one next to the Fairmount Hotel.Photo by Page Graham.
Related Stories:
Ghost Buildings Haunt San Antonio’s ‘Decade of Downtown’
An Open Letter to Restaurant Gwendolyn
Just turn it into a giant sidewalk! Sever a couple of roads and place parking at the very ends of those spots. Then add a giant escalator like the one in Hong Kong. City governments are pretty good at eminent domain seizures so why not just seize a couple of buildings (joking) and turn them into pedestrian hangouts with skywalks and parking.
Yeah, the best bet here is to actually come together (again) as a community and discuss this. Downtown residents should (of course) have a say in how their community is used and the property owners (as well as the City of San Antonio-COSA) need to be a part of the conversation as well. All stakeholders should be present and accounted for. Without that, without community discourse that results in immediate action, there is no point.
Wonderful piece, love the new sign. Some of what makes parking difficult is there are so many empty stores. Austin’s downtown has many stores that are open during the day and it does make a long walk more interesting. I enjoy walking down Houston, N st Mary’s, Commerce. Broadway leading into downtown is extremely boring and there is nothing to look at, Ave B has a more urban vibe. I will say that parking can be as high as $20-$30 during fiesta, but during Austin’s SXSW I can park for $10 on congress, and free on Sundays. I’ll admit there is good reason for the variable price but it does make the buyer feel like they are being squeezed where others don’t find it necessary. I can max out on a regular day at $7 in LA, $7 Austin, $7 NOLA, and $98 NYC. I know our tourist population makes it easy to charge $10-$15 and fix existing issues tomorrow, but it’s also what’s hurting residential participation.
The city being a piece of government isn’t used to marketing and being graded like a business is. If the mayor wants something the news will just show up, but real marketing actually requires a good pitch and being graded on outcomes. There’s no eminent domain, taxation options, or cash incentives for good marketing, your grade is pass, or fail.
In this city getting a good story on the news or having Randy Beamer rant about why people should support the city has never been enough. We need actual work and changes to make that happen, and yes persuasion and branding are huge factors.
Parking wouldn’t be such an issue if people would ride the bus. People are required to spend a lot of time waiting and standing for their cars (gas stations, maintenance, traffic, tickets, DMV, accidents), but don’t want to walk a block & wait 5 mins for the next bus (use a schedule).
Also: UBER, Car2Go. Let’s end YellowCab’s monopoly and give licenses to other public transportation options.
Uber. Car2Go. HeyRide. Let’s end YellowCab and Hertz’s monopoly on alternative transportation options. The COSA should offer licenses to start-ups related to car-share or ride-share programs.
Not sure where to start this comment, so I’ll begin with offering the correction that most inner-city neighborhoods (at least the ones nearest downtown) were not built during the infancy of the automotive era. These were built well before. This city was served primarily by streetcars until 1933 and buses continued this function well into the 1940s. This includes neighborhoods spanning 3 or more miles from the core.
The street network is not a grid in downtown, making it less intuitive when relating transportation to location unless you are quite familiar with downtown. The service industry and developers are given priority in the parking discussion whether it is de facto or explicit. Public transportation as it should be used is not even part of the discussion.
In this article you discuss Streetcar, though only in the context of “once it’s built, there will be more parking available because of lane reconfigurations.” Other times that transit is part of the discussion, people suggest that parking should be available just outside of downtown, then transit used to circulate people to their destinations. Park & Ride is a commute solution, not a circulation solution. The reality is that downtown San Antonio has tons of parking that is really cheap. Our officials don’t recognize this because hotels and developers say otherwise. Is peak parking stock ideal if your a hotel or developer? Absolutely. Is it needed if you’re a user of those locations? Not really. If there is demand for the product, people will use it. I go downtown all the time for business and pleasure. I either take the bus or find a place thats free and near my destination. This is actually very simple. I demand something downtown and I go get it without having to pay or even drive, and its easy.
Downtown San Antonio is growing up. To expand on the this analogy, it appears at the moment that downtown is a teenager with tons of potential that lives comfortably in a good home. It’s time to go to college and we will have to get some loans. Eventually, we will need to get a job and start paying our own bills. Life costs money and its difficult, but you can figure it out and become successful. If downtown wants to be successful, we’ll need to learn how to deal with things like saying no or making hotels and developers actually give things to get things. The rest of us will need to learn to pay for parking and use transit and walk.
If the arguement against using transit as a real solution to parking in downtown San Antonio is “that’s all fine and good, but that’s not what people are doing now,” that is insufficient and terribly short-sighted, and perhaps even a bit snobby. I can guarantee that whatever the solutions are that are being discussed are not what people are doing now. Maybe instead of spoiling, we should make our teenage downtown get a job to pay for the extra things they want. People coming from well outside of downtown should try park & rides located at 410 and 1604. Express buses take you as close to your destination as almost any parking space will get you (you have to walk from bus stops the same as parking spaces). Inner-city residents should take the short bus ride to downtown, which gets you just as close as well in as much time, and you don’t even need to worry about how confusing it can be to drive around downtown. If this is not what people are doing now, then suggest they should and help them understand how instead of dismissing it because you don’t understand. Its easy, its cheap, its safe, though its unfamiliar. Instead of trying to move buses out of downtown, we should be trying to make them work for downtown better. THAT should be the discussion.
Right on.
Thank you, Worker, for clarifying a very important point about the inner-city neighborhoods, some of which were built before cars. Many homes do not have driveways or garages. The public street is the only option for residential parking.
As for residential parking, some of my inner-city neighbors have multiple, large vehicles. (I wonder why they live here). But other neighbors have already moved to small, economical cars or none at all.
Yet the street remains an issue.
Not only were the homes built before cars, the streets were too. My street is so narrow that when people park on both sides (and they do), there is no room for two cars driving in opposite directions to pass. And then you should see the school bus and UPS truck navigate this mess.
Overlay on that the downtown workers looking for free parking, and it’s a nightmare that deserves a better plan than the one the City is recommending for Arsenal street.
Then there’s the navigation mess described in the article. A mess created by City leadership willing to do anything “to get the business.”
Drive from 281 toward Presa on Florida any night, and the multiple, reflecting signs will make you laugh. Do this. Don’t do that. Stop here. What a joke. An eyesore. A perfect vision of a City on the Rise. Yes, it’s about time for a more radical approach.
Our city “leaders” are, for the most part, profoundly ignorant of the most basic principles of city planning. Much of the elementary wisdom in this field (e.g. uninterrupted street grids, public occupancy type at ground floor, efficiency of streetside parking, etc.) was well-studied and understood before many of our local politicians were even born. But you know, I don’t fault them so much for being ignorant, as for being so stupidly stubborn. I’m profoundly ignorant about the innards of my automatic transmission, so when it stopped working, I at least had the sense to find the best expert I could afford and entrust him to do his thing. Had I approached it like CoSA, I would’ve asked the mechanic’s advice, feigned some interest, and then done the opposite of what he said.
^^^Like^^^
Double like.
The parking problem is not the only factor that makes driving downtown a nightmare.
The city has narrowed some streets and/or made them two-way (such as Houston) which impedes traffic flow.
Other streets have become ‘Bus Only’ lanes (such as southbound Navarro by the Central Library) which diverts traffic to other avenues.
Some streets have been totally and permanently blocked (such as northbound and southbound Main Plaza) just to make it ‘purdy’ for the foot-bound tourist.
Then there are streets that have been blocked by ’eminent domain’ to provide parking for the ‘important people’ who work in the adjacent buildings (such as south Main by the Courthouse and by the H-E-B corporate office).
Occasionally, downtown streets are closed for repairs or special events. Such closures create other bottle-necks.
And don’t get me started about an entire neighborhood (King William) which seems to be striving to become a ‘gated community.’
The city and county must realize the people who pay for public streets (the taxpayer) should have the right to use these public streets!
Page:
Where it is metioned ” The other side of the street flanks H-E-B headquarters and is a tow-away zone. ” Well there is still a small space adjacent to the H.E.B. commercial gate on East Arsenal adjacent to the riverwalk. I have observed folks who work downtown, H.E.B. as well as visitors to H.E.B. park there at this spot. It can park/accomodate perhaps 5/6 vehicles, depending on their size of course. I pass by this area every weekday mornings and have seen H.E.B. (especially since I see them walking to the employee entrance on Arsenal.) employees/H.E.B. visitors and others who are walking to the downtown area.
Either way, I once worked downtown and utilized a parking lot for my own personal vehicle. I spoke to a police officer and this is what I understood…
When it comes to downotwn public parking. Parking is free at meters after 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 a.m. Monday through Saturday. All day Sunday it is free until Monday morning starting at 8:00 a.m. However, if the city grants a free parking meter holiday on a federally recognized Monday holiday i.e., Martin Luther King, Columbus Day, Veterans Day… Then this gives the parker a free meter holiday for that particular Monday. This goes the same for Commercial Loading Zone parking spots. Monday through Friday after 6:00 p.m. All day Sunday it is free. And if I further undestood this correctly: Commercial Loading Zones are not enforced on Saturdays starting at noon thus giving the parker another free parking spot on Saturday in downtown San Antonio, TX.
Perhaps this parking enforcement might have changed by the CIty of San Antonio parking enforcement? But on past Saturday ‘s I have parked at Commercial Loading Zones starting at mid-afternnon with no citations issued to me.
However, a fellow who works for a private parking lot group downtown San Antonio said that free parking for those with handicap parking plates/hanging tags is not part of free parking at their lots. Parkers with these handicap/hanging tags have been towed away from private parking lots in the past if they did not pay up the parkign rates in full. And these parkers have not been happy about this towing situation. Yet, that is life.
Greyhound Bus on St. Mary’s Street has a commercial package pickup parking lot facing St. Marks Episcopal Church West Parking Lot. And this is for commercial package pickup lot only and nothing else. Not even if you are on business (picking up/dropping off passengers, purchasing bus tickets… at the Greyhound Bus Terminal next door. Even these folks on Greyhound business have been towed away from the commercial package pickup parking lot. If they did not go to package pickup to either pickup or dropoff commercial packages. And the towing company is Bexar Towing who has made local news regarding their business practice.
Oh well getting back to the parkers who have handicap license plates/hanging tags. They have free parking at city meters and perhaps city garages for that reason. Yet, it does not apply to private parking lot groups. And since Bexar Towing is part of a majority private parking lots enforcement for downtown San Antonio… I would rather pay the set rate. It would be a lot cheaper that a tow/impound fee(s).
Yet, I agree that downtown San Anotnio could use an upgrade when it comes to public parking.
You’re just a tourist who doesn’t know where the free parking is. I’ve been living downtown for two years and have never payed for parking. There’s over two thousand free parking spots that never fill up (even on holidays). Explore the city, learn, then criticize.
As a 35-year resident of San Antonio, including several gigs in and around the downtown area, I would be fascinated to know about these 2000 free parking spaces. If you would like to share your information, perhaps we could create a map infographic to share with our Rivard Report readers. It would be an incredible civic hack!!!
Yes, do share these 2000 parking spaces. Heck, I take just 100.
And people wonder why they do San Antonio’s a hick-town still? No wonder here at this is yet another area where they make no sense here. More great image from the city leaders.