Hi All,

The headline "Council sidelines...library-garage plan" is from Santa Cruz Local's report on what happened on Tuesday

History will tell us if Tuesday was the pivotal moment that the Council "sidelined" the garage plan or not. The Council approved a motion to "put on hold the decision to proceed with a Downtown Library project and to convene a Council Subcommittee composed of Council members Cummings, Meyers, and Brown to investigate alternatives." Our hope is that the subcommittee will have a chance to dive into the analysis of parking downtown (see below) and realize that there are other ways to address the spot shortages of parking other than build a new garage.

Without a doubt, the Council's decision on Tuesday is an essential step towards "sidelining" the garage, and it wouldn't have happened without the vigorous public expression to the Council. So thank you!

I'll keep you posted as this subcommittee does its work. You can write me at Rick@sustainabletransportationSC.org

-Rick Longinotti

Addressing Misconceptions About Parking Downtown

"But there's a parking shortage downtown. The Locust St. garage gets full on a regular basis on weekday afternoons."

A major contributor to the Locust Garage parking crunch on weekday afternoons is the high number of discount parking permits assigned to the Garage, accounting for up to 60% of total parking spaces according to the City. At the same time that Locust Garage is full, there is ample parking in other City facilities. According to the annual parking census that the City conducts on a peak weekday afternoon just before Christmas, there were 24% offstreet spaces and 25% curb spaces available Downtown.  So we have a parking management problem, not a parking shortage.

"But we're going to need more parking spaces with all the new development Downtown and the loss of spaces at surface lots."

The graph of future parking demand shows that there will be a surplus of parking spaces in 2025 in spite of new development Downtown and a loss of surface parking spaces. It was produced by Patrick Siegman, who was the Nelson\Nygaard staff person charged with studying Downtown Santa Cruz parking.

"But we need a new City parking garage in order to reduce or eliminate parking requirements for new affordable housing Downtown."

This statement fails to acknowledge the realities of the "shared parking model", where the same parking space is used for visitors and workers by day and residents by night. There are over 2000 parking spaces in existing garages and lots that sit unused overnight. We don't need another garage to supply overnight parking to residents of new housing projects.