Cities like San Mateo and Redwood City are using parking meters in their downtown areas to remind short-term parkers to move along and encourage long-term parkers to use public transit or Uber. The parking charge is cheap (like 50 cents/hour) but most drivers understand and obey parking meters better than the confusing parking zones in Menlo Park and Palo Alto. Parking meters are also easier/cheaper to enforce than zones.

Any time something is free it will not be utilized efficiently.

And Menlo Park's "free parking" is actually paid for by the time and effort spent by people searching for parking spaces.

To cut down on carbon emissions and help the environment, wouldn't it make sense to find a better solution than to have nearly 1,000 people a day move their cars every 2-3 hours, several times a day? Does it make sense to start the engine, move a car a block or two, and shut it down? Yes, riding a bike solves that problem, but until you can pry people away from their cars, it will be hard for Menlo Park to reach its goal of reduced carbon emissions.

Maybe a parking garage would help, much like one sees in neighboring cities such as Palo Alto, Mountain View and San Jose to the south and Redwood City, San Carlos and San Francisco to the north. As they say "if you build it, they will come."

Menlo Park writes OVER 20,000 parking ticket per year. The bad will this casues is tremendous, the cost of collecting it is a negative impact on the budget (think pensions...I always do)

We have a parking problem, and our council needs ot look closely at neighboring cities and their various solutions and fix this.

Roy

I have NEVER found it difficult to find parking in Menlo Park. All I do is walk a couple blocks.
If I were to insist on parking next door to a restaurant, then I would have a problem, too. That isn't a problem that more parking will solve. In Palo Alto where there are a number of garages, I have to walk farther than a couple blocks all the time. Same in Redwood City.
Re-evaluating parking rules might help reduce the number of tickets. We can learn from other cities. At the end of the day, though, walking some distance is part of the solution.

A big issue with a parking structure, assuming it's even needed, is who pays for it? This question is regularly avoided in these discussions.

Roy's parking ticket number is useful in proving that the existing generous free parking privilege is being abused. Maybe it's time for meters.

As I have said before there are many ways to increase the availability of short term parking capacity downtown WITHOUT building a parking structure, and these should be carefully evaluated. These are much less expensive and could be available many years before a parking structure => 5 years from now, at the earliest. Just requires creativity, open-mindedness and courage.

Dana,

Your comments are appreciated, but are much too abstract. Can you be more specific, by giving one or more examples? What do you mean by it will take courage? It would be great if the city could provide MORE PARKING, but how?

x - Downtown Shopper, I encourage you to read my analysis at x - Downtown Shopper

Summary:

The city needs to

*** Create a conservative but well-reasoned reasoned 5, 10 and 20 year forecast for the need for downtown parking, one that reflects an understanding of how to use parking management policies and tactics to reduce the number of single passenger trips, especially daily permits users who generally consume a space for 4 hours or more. These are spaces that could be used by 10 or more "shoppers" during the day.

1. Re-examine the mix of daily permit (685) and hourly parking spaces (515) => 57% of downtown plaza parking spaces are unavailable for short term use during weekdays. This is too high a percentage.

2. Reduce demand by increasing permit fees (now $485/year) => less than half of the cost of parking at the train station ($5.00/day).

3. Reduce the supply ofdaily parking permits over time, e.g., 5% a year until a new target capacity is reached. 5% => 35 spaces => 6.8% increase in short term parking.

4, Create satellite permit parking within a half mile of downtown and serve with the Menlo shuttle service.

Millennials are driving less and car-alternatives should be encouraged by cities and businesses.

This will take courage because exiting permit users and employers will naturally favor the status quo.

Here is the URL omitted in my prior comment.
Web Link