This growing population shines light on a problem CUF has struggled with for more than 30 years. It is hard not to notice that Cincinnati’s urban core is on the up-and-up, and the work that organizations like the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) and OTR A.D.O.P.T. are doing in Over-the-Rhine is making the area more attractive to young professionals, artists, students, and even some older suburbanite emigres. And this is a trend that seems poised to continue as gasoline prices continue to rise.

Proposed parking reform plan for uptown’s Clifton Heights, University Heights and Fairview neighborhoods. Image Provided.

The increased interest in downtown will soon spillover into CUF which itself has many benefits – ample green space (Bellevue Hill Park, Fairview Park, and tree-lined streets), a variety of restaurants and nightlife, unique cafes, beautiful houses and of course its proximity to UC, Findlay Market, Over-the-Rhine and the Central Business District. An influx in residents means more people, more cars and tougher competition for car storage in a neighborhood proudly built in an age before automobile parking was mandated by law.

It was with all of this in mind that the CUF Neighborhood Association (CUFNA) trustees formed a committee in the summer of 2010 to develop solutions to the parking problem. The committee, made up of longtime residents, landlords, students, new residents, and business owners, has worked for the past year-and-a-half to develop a plan to serve the parking needs of both residents and visitors alike.

The committee’s proposal is similar to San Francisco’s metered parking program, and calls for a market-based approach to allocating on-street spaces. It is envisioned that this will provide residents with greater certainty in parking while allowing better access for shoppers and visitors. The plan, which would ensure the constant availability of parking spaces, is projected to pay for itself and provide a substantial new source of revenue for either the City or a specific neighborhood improvement district.

The parking proposal calls for the introduction of priced monthly permits or smart-metered shorter term parking for the roughly 3,000 on-street spaces in Clifton Heights, University Heights and Fairview. The city’s Department of Transportation & Engineering (DOTE) would then be responsible for setting permit and meter prices each month to target an 85-90% occupancy rate.

The prices, advocates say, would be skewed in favor of neighborhood residents and would ensure that some spaces are always available when they are needed. Currently, residents and visitors alike can spend up to an hour circling not only on weeknights, but throughout the day as well.

Preliminary numbers indicate the revenue from permit sales alone could pay for around-the-clock enforcement while still generating a surplus of between $50,000 and $200,000 annually. San Francisco and Washington, D.C. have proven the popularity of such programs. With increasingly congested streets these cities began to set market forces on the efficient allocation of on-street vehicular parking.

Advocates of the idea say that they are still working to get the city’s support, but hope that progress can be made on the reforms sometime in 2012.

Court Street Parking Kiosk - Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

Approximately one decade ago, then City Manager John Shirey engaged in a real-world experiment with the way people use parking meters. The idea was that consolidated solar-powered parking kiosks could make the process more cost effective and beneficial for users and business owners. The reality, however, has been different.

The first kiosks made their way onto Third Street in downtown Cincinnati. Those two, $8,000-a-piece, kiosks were then followed by an additional ten kiosks on Court Street and Third Street. Early on it was touted that the maintenance costs would be less for these kiosks as opposed to the many individual parking meters they replaced. What seemed to spell the end of these kiosks, however, may have been the lack of maintenance they received.

Almost from the first year they were installed, users complained of problems with pay-and-display parking kiosks. Money would jam, credit card readers did not work, or the whole kiosk was for some reason malfunctioning.

These early and ongoing problems eliminated the possibility for users to see any potential benefit from the new form of paying for on-street parking. The early problems also eliminated virtually any and all possibility of the system growing into what was envisioned for it.

Originally, city leaders discussed the idea of allowing downtown visitors to purchase monthly parking passes for the pay-and-display kiosks. They also mentioned the idea of allowing a user on Court Street to take their extra time and use it somewhere else downtown without having to pay a second time. Both ideas were well intentioned, but both ideas never happened.

Maintenance issues aside, individuals around the country have complained about the lack of an individual parking meter at their space. The personal relationship between a person, their car, and their assigned meter is obviously stronger than what city officials thought.

The city appears to now have abandoned this experiment gone wrong. The pay-and-display parking kiosks on Court Street have been shut off and replaced by new individual electronic parking meters that are solar powered. Those meters are part of a larger $1.7 million effort to replace all 1,400 parking meters downtown with the new technology.

In cities where space on the sidewalk is a big concern, the initiative to reduce street furniture like parking meters should continue to remain a priority. In Cincinnati, however, most streets do not suffer from this severe lack of space, and therefore it is probably a better approach to use individual parking meters with these technological upgrades rather than completely overhauling the system.

While the parking kiosks originally envisioned by City Manager Shirey did not pan out, he should be commended for his leadership, because without that Cincinnati may not be where it is now in terms of upgraded the rest of its on-street parking payment technologies.

City officials should continue to explore creative options for its parking assets. In 2010 UrbanCincy estimated that a public-private parking partnership could result in an additional $3.06 million in revenues annually. The possibilities of leveraging these assets are intriguing, and nothing should be left off the discussion table during this time of limited resources.