Citizens for Responsible Parking
Its unclear yet whether CRPP will position itself as a traditional petition and advocacy group, or harness some hackability principles to influence and craft a new-and-better parking approach with the city. The website uses citizen-captured photos of "creative" (and illegal) parking approaches to get around the current overnight parking ban, as proof that the current policy is not working.
This has been an interesting topic buzzing around the city for the past few years. Providence is one of the only major US cities without a resident parking program, relying instead on an overnight parking ban. An overnight parking ban for what? Proponents say it prevents car abandonments, decreases on-street crime, and most significantly prevents illegal overcrowding of multi-tenant units. On-street parking, the theory goes, would allow many more cars to be associated with an address, in violation of housing laws.
Unfortunately there isn't much data to support these hypotheses, or proof that the goals couldn't be as well or better accomplished with a well-managed resident permit program. The continued reliance on the overnight parking ban seems to be as much about resource limitations and a reluctance to change a system that administrators know and are comfortable with.
The well-managed resident parking permit programs I've lived around do well with the on-street goals; preventing car abandonments, protecting parking places for residents, and generating revenue from ticket fines for the city. Additionally, a nominal fee for the permits generates addditional fee revenue. Providence hasn't turned the corner on the realization that fees are more effective than fines, because citizens are paying for something they want.
I doubt that a resident permit program would control overcrowding very well. Resident permits would have some proof of residency requirements, and a limitation per unit on the number of permits. But if you are motivated enough to park in your front yard, you are probably motivated enough to find a way around these limits to get a permit, even if you are the third vehicle in a unit (or renting one of the myriad illegal third floor apartments in the city!).
Housing enforcement, which has barely had a heartbeat in recent history, would have to work a lot harder to enforce zoning laws directly. Today, they rather than relying on the parking ban to reduce housing violations, as they hope for today.
1 comment:
I would go even further-
It seems to me that the easiest, zero cost method of making this happen for Providence would be just to repeal the ticketing of cars for being on the street between the banned hours of 1AM-6AM.
Why do you need to be a resident or purchase a sticker? Why only limit the number of stickers to 2 per household like they did in the pilot program in Washington Park? The pilot in Washington Park is also flawed because it makes the resident parking areas resident ONLY after 11PM. What if I have a guest that wants to stay past 11PM?
If a car is parked illegally for any other reason, it should still get a ticket. But not just for being on the street during 1-6AM.
As you know from living in other cities, there are often places to park a car overnight, even if you aren't a resident. I lived in Boston for 4 years with a car and never even switched the registration to Mass. But here we do not have that. I think this is important to the larger issue because many multi-family's have students from other states living in them, and to prevent pave-over yards these people need to be accommodated also.
Post a Comment