With an eye on the completion of the community pool project later this summer, city councilmembers held a wide-ranging, two-hour+ discussion at their March 17 meeting to consider how to reconfigure the city’s downtown parking spaces, a knotty problem that has bedeviled city decision-makers for years, but especially since 2019 when construction started at Piedmont High School and has continued until now with the pool.
“We have limited parking and many, many points of view as to how parking should be assigned,” said City Manager Rosanna Bayon Moore. The Council will be asked to approve a final striping plan by May 5 so the city can do the work while school is out and is expected to revisit the proposal at an upcoming meeting before making a final decision.
Public Works Director Daniel Gonzalez walked the Council through a presentation of a “maximalist” approach to public parking along Bonita Avenue, Hillside Avenue, Highland Avenue, Magnolia Avenue, and Vista Avenue. This scenario — which Gonzalez said was not set in stone — included the following proposals:
- Highland Avenue (between Sierra Avenue and Sheridan Avenue)
Permanent installation of 16 (formerly temporary) diagonal parking spaces along the Highland/Sheridan strip
- Bonita Avenue (between Vista Avenue and Oakland Avenue)
One-way vehicular traffic in the northbound direction of Bonita Avenue, eliminating the pick up / drop off zone, adding 17 new parking spaces (2 of which are ADA compliant) by reorienting from parallel to diagonal parking on the east side of Bonita.
(Several residents of Bonita Avenue raised safety and traffic concerns about the one-way street and diagonal space proposal at the meeting and councilmembers asked city staff to provide them with more information about this proposal at their next meeting.)
- Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Compliant Parking Spaces
Provision of 16 ADA compliant spaces in alignment with the requirement of 4% of roughly 400 public parking spaces within the Civic Center
Under the maximalist scenario, the city says a total of 396 total public parking spaces are available within the Civic Center. (PUSD provides 44 parking spaces within its campus, including 5 electric vehicle (EV) spaces and 5 ADA spaces, for its employees.)
The city says it received approximately 500 responses to a survey it sent out in February. It shared significant takeaways from the survey:
- Approximately 85% of respondents reported visiting the Civic Center for 2 hours or less.
- Approximately one half of respondents reported that they found parking to be somewhat or very difficult.
- Approximately one half of respondents reported that the current distribution of time-limited parking spaces was appropriate.
- Approximately one quarter of respondents reported that more time-limited parking spaces would be beneficial.
Gonzalez said he often gets questions about wasted space related to off-limits red curb zones. “We have red curbs throughout the civic center,” said Gonzalez, “…and more is coming due to AB 413, the daylighting of intersections [for pedestrian safety].” The red curb at the high school is a code requirement, he said, and essential for first responder access. He said both the police and fire chiefs reviewed the city’s proposal.
In response to a resident query, Gonzalez noted that designated pool parking was not under consideration.