Dell
City officials are looking to see if a solution to downtown parking problems could be reducing the scope of their enforcement area.
The Columbus Board of Works voted Tuesday to enact the Columbus Parking Commission’s recommendation to limit the enforcement of three-hour parking to just Washington Street from First to Eighth Street on a trial basis in early 2023.
Other downtown parking spaces that are typically monitored by the city and subject to time limits will be “free and open to the general public,” said Columbus City Councilman and Commission Chairman Tom Dell. The change is expected to begin sometime in January and last a few months, possibly extending into April.
The city will study parking utilization during this time to see what effect the changes have, said City Engineer/Executive Director of Public Works Dave Hayward, who is also part of the commission.
“It’s a trial basis,” said Dell. “So within three months we would hope we would generate enough information that we can come back not only to the parking commission, but to you as well, to allow you to understand if that was successful or not, are there criticisms of those, so that we can make other recommendations, possibly to change the ordinance.”
City officials stated in a release that following the first quarter, the commission will “review the statistics before deciding on a recommendation for an ordinance.”
Board of Works member John Pickett, who co-owns a downtown business with parking commission member Jeff Baker, expressed his approval of the pilot idea.
“It’s different with Cummins not being as prevalent downtown, but for those of us trying to conduct commercial business on Washington Street, we have to have some kind of behavior modification to push those people out of the parking places, because otherwise we don’t have any parking,” said Pickett. “And certainly, some of our older clients, it really affects them. But in this case, what you’re doing is a win-win for people because you’re opening up like 200 spaces to free all-day parking.”
When asked how the news will be communicated to the public, Dell said that it will likely be posted on the city’s website. The news was also shared with members of the media via a press release on Tuesday afternoon.
Dell also suggested that parking signs in areas where they’re lifting restrictions could be covered up to avoid confusion, though Department of Public Works Director Bryan Burton said that it would be just as easy to simply remove the signs and leave the posts in place.
