Ypsilanti’s downtown has plenty of parking, but the parking system is inefficient, the Downtown Development Authority has concluded.
The DDA conducted a year-long study of the city’s downtown, Depot Town and West Cross district's parking lots.
It will present its suggestions on how to improve the system at a public meeting at the Ypsilanti Freighthouse at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday. The recommendations will then be presented to the Ypsilanti City Council, which will vote on approving them.
“We’ve noticed where in the parking system there is an issue, where there's not an issue and it’s not always being used in its best capacity,” said DDA Director Tim Colbeck.
Among those suggestions is testing the Hertz On-Demand program in the Washington Street lot adjacent to the Ypsilanti Transit Center, which would allow registered users to rent a car hourly. The DDA hopes that would encourage more mass transit usage and reduce parking strain in DDA districts.
The DDA report also asks the city to consider testing parking meters that allow users to pay using mobile devices. That would also allow parking enforcement officers to use web-enabled parking monitoring systems and increase their efficiency.
Other enforcement-related suggestions include extending enforcement hours; focusing enforcement on “core areas” and less on “peripheral” areas; and enforcing violations in commercial loading zones.
In its report, the DDA supports the Shape Ypsilanti master plan that calls for the creation of more two-way streets and more road diets, which would create more opportunity for on-street parking. So-called road diets are used to reduce the number of lanes on a road or street, for example from two-lanes running in each direction to one lane in each direction with a turn lane in the middle.
Another concern is deterioration of lots, including the Ballard Street lot and alleviating “stressed” lots that are regularly filled while others sit empty. The DDA is recommending incentives for permit users and those parking long term to switch from parking in busier lots to less busy lots, such as the Washington Street and South Huron Street lots downtown.
The DDA is also recommending creating a single entity for overseeing the parking system. That entity would manage meters, tickets, parking data and establish a parking fund.
“There has been some misconception what this is," Colbeck said. "The DDA is not angling to run parking like Ann Arbor model,” he said.
Tom Perkins is a freelance reporter for AnnArbor.com. Contact the news desk at news@annarbor.com or 734-623-2530.