Laguna's Cycle Tavern

How would it be?

Just in time for 

• Fete de la Musique
  
• Festival of Arts
• Fourth of July
• Anytime 
  

 -LS

Parking Meter Rates at Eleven Parking Structures II

The 13 June 2023 LB Agenda contains the Parking and Transportation Demand Management Report prepared by the Parking Master Plan Subcommittee calling for  embellishing eighteen parking lots and constructing nine new parking structures. Table-2 of this report gives a summary labeled Projects G-O, their street locations in Laguna Beach, the number of parking spaces added and the capital cost of construction. Assuming 30-year financing and 40-year life the charts below shows the minimum hourly parking rate necessary to breakeven with the amortized costs over the 40-year structure life.  

 

The first chart includes land and opportunity costs (if any) per parking space added.  The second chart excludes land and opportunity costs for all spaces provided. In this way the charts bound the possible outcomes from the highest meter rate to the lowest, for each project.

The analysis considers costs of construction, debt service, land costs, opportunity costs, demolition, salvage, in-lieu parking fees, maintenance and other costs in the amortization over the structure lifetime. Not included: bond financing premiums, parking enforcement, soil remediation, environment factors (quakes, floods), depreciation, inflation and taxes (if applicable). These results are preliminary and may be updated as project information is made available. Project I is the Village Entrance 3-story structure.

 -LS

Forest Children with Chalk

Campaign NYC 25x25 comes from Transportation Alternatives where planners were bold enough to imagine what it would look like to remove one-quarter of the city's automobile occupancy and return it to people by 2025. Not utopian just what is happening in Oslo and Paris right now (full SLATE article).

Removing one-quarter of NYC's 19,000 miles of driving lanes and 3-million free parking spaces, New York City could:  

•  give pedestrians access to 1,000 miles of streets
•  car-free block for play, outdoor learning, pickup/drop at 1,700 public schools.
•  put every resident within a five-minute walk of 500 miles of bus lanes, 
•  500 miles of (real, car-protected) bike lanes
•  lease 5.4 million square feet of street space to businesses and nonprofits
• put public bike parking on every block.
• plant 15,000 new trees, the equivalent of adding almost Central Park
• establish hubs for street vendors, benches, trees, public bathrooms, 
• bike charging, and bike parking outside every subway station,
• raise billions for transit by metering public parking spaces.  

 

-LS

Council Approves Parking Management Report

In a well attended session Tuesday June 13 the Laguna Beach City Council adopted (Video 4:28) all Recommendations from city staff with modifications to the Parking and Transportation Demand Management Report (PTDMR). Recommendation #6 removes the Presbyterian church parking structure. These are highlights of those Recommendations approved by Council in a 5/0 vote.

(1) Review and accept the final Parking and Transportation Demand Management Report;

(2) Direct staff to proceed with the implementation of all short-term TDM (reuse) strategies and updates to the City’s parking regulations;

(3) Direct staff to continue the evaluation of medium-term TDM strategies;

(6) Direct staff to proceed with the next steps for a 3-level 327-space parking structure at 635 Laguna Canyon Road/Farmers Market, 200 added spaces costing $81,343 per added space. Target users are downtown business employees, attendees and volunteers of Playhouse and Festival of Arts;

(8) Direct staff to study the feasibility of remote parking at Act V, 3-level 516-space parking structure at 1900 Laguna Canyon Road, 263 added spaces costing $98,099 per space. Target users are City's fleet of vehicles and trolleys, the general public primarily during summer;
 
(10) Direct staff to review the Complete Streets Mobility Study for "other" potential strategies. 

 

NOTES:  Since the Council unanimously carried a "motion to adopt", all PTDMR parking lots and parking structure projects remain in consideration.  The 13 June Agenda Item #14 and staff report make no clarification to "complete streets" in 226-pages, no commitment for funding or qualifications are addressed. Recommendation #10 remains most vague, we have been played again.

 -LS

LB Parking Demand Studies

There are three consultant reports about LB parking capacity and occupancy (the supply and spaces occupied), and solutions for better parking utilization. One consultant study shows us our parking occupancy is filled to 85% capacity but only 5% of the time. Another consultant study shows us downtown off-street parking occupancy is filled 80-100% in summer only, in winter it is 30-60%.  

Now a third consultant retained by LB City disputes these claims in a Parking and Transportation Demand Management Report (Jan 10 2023)* prepared by the Parking Management Subcommittee. The Subcommittee reports high parking occupancy all the time and recommends 11 new parking structures in 18 new parking lots from 23 locations studied.    

"New construction public parking infrastructure is generally a long-term strategy.  However, the Subcommittee also recommends that two significant infrastructure  projects (new multi-level parking structures) be pursued in the medium-term."  

The consultants and their reporting are:

IBI Group:  Existing Parking Analysis & Recommendations for the Downtown Specific Plan Area, Mar 2017

RBF Consultants: Downtown and Laguna Canyon Parking Management Plan (PMP) 2013 

City Council Parking Master Plan Subcommittee: LB Parking and Transportation Demand Management Report (Fehr & Peers Consultants), Jan 2023

 

IBI Group

Quoting from the study “Based on these observed occupancies and the current public and private parking supply, which was further analyzed according to the area’s land uses, the study resulted in three key findings.”

“Key Finding #1: The City can benefit from reducing the minimum required parking requirements for non-residential uses in the DSP area. The overall actual built supply of parking spaces exceeds overall actual demand.”
“Key Finding #2: Private parking spaces are underutilized. Parking demand in the Downtown Specific Plan area is higher in public parking spaces than in private parking spaces during both summer and non-summer months.”
“Key Finding #3: The Downtown Specific Plan area attracts more visitors during the summer season.”

RBF Consultants

The Consultants summarize the parking occupancy of the downtown and Laguna Canyon areas. The parking capacity in available public owned parking spaces is Summer:1977 Winter:1547. From actual traffic counts the Consultants summarize the off-street parking occupancy in downtown as 30-60% in winter and 80-100% in summer.  These results also do not justify a new permanent parking structure.

• Downtown On-Street Parking Occupancy
    o Summer Weekend/Weekday: 80% – 100%
    o Non-Summer Weekend/Weekday: 60% – 80%
• Downtown Off-Street Parking Occupancy
    o Summer Weekend/Weekday: 80% – 100%
    o Non-Summer Weekend/Weekday: 30% – 60%
• Canyon On-Street Parking Occupancy
    o Summer Weekend: 80% – 100%
    o Summer Weekday: 60% – 90%
    o Non-Summer Weekend: 60% – 80%
    o Non-Summer Weekday: 5% – 15%
• Canyon Off-Street Parking Occupancy
    o Summer Weekend: 70% – 90%
    o Summer Weekday: 40% – 70%

City Subcommittee

Notice the difference in conclusion from the Management Plan Subcommittee, in the parking and PTDMR report (Fehr and Peers) under Benefit to Residents page 39 says:   

Centralized parking creates more incentive for visitors to pay for parking for the convenience, rather than park for free in a residential area further away from their destination. We can reasonably predict that individuals are often willing to pay for this amenity based on the high occupancy trends at the Glenneyre Street parking structure and other public parking facilities.

Under Parking Capacity and Occupancy the report warns readers with this caption of the Village entrance. 

Locating available parking near a destination can be challenging ...... remain at near‐full occupancy throughout  the peak period. Once these areas are effectively full, remaining available parking  may be scattered and difficult to locate.  

The Subcommittee then proposes the solution to over-demand for parking is to add enough parking spaces to hold peak occupancy under 85%, even stacked parking if necessary for a "park once" approach to avoid motorist inconvenience (page 45).  

The conclusion from IBI was the existing built parking supply exceeded overall demand, asked why this conclusion was a contradiction Fehr and Peers had no comment (page 81).  The findings from RBF Consulting are also in contradiction to the Subcommittee recommendations. A winter 30-60% occupancy is already below the 85% occupancy Subcommittee target, however the RBF results were not compared. 

Two outcomes of the PTDMR recommendations were proposed.

(1) to reduce the impact of visitor and employee parking in residential neighborhoods and improve the quality of life for residents; and (2) to enhance mobility in the City’s commercial areas during peak periods to benefit both residents and visitors.

The first outcome to reduce parking occupancy under 85% will never be achieved today due to induced demand for parking, any land-use planner can tell you that.   The second outcome suffers from the same logic of car-culture; adding more car infrastructure to improve mobility simply exacerbate car traffic in our LB Village.

What is NOT in this fabricated report:   "Complete Streets Policy" does not appear anywhere in the 141-page PTDMR. The keywords in the short-list "induced demand, multi modal, mode share, transit" describing a balanced mobility plan to reduce parking demand  does not appear anywhere in the PTDMR.

 In 141-pages the PTDMR has completely ignored the amortized costs of financing, constructing, maintaining, operating and enforcing parking structures. The Subcommittee and City Staff dream of operating 1950 parking lots like a 2023 city  ATM Machine without analyzing life-time facility costs. DO THE MATH as Laguna Streets have done.  Check these parking meter rates for 11 structures and decide if you would park there or in a neighborhood for FREE!

Consultants report the recommendations they are retained to produce. In this case the clear disagreement between three consultants is revealing, the Parking Management Subcommittee has an agenda to sell parking.

-LS

* A new revision June 13 2023 replaces Jan 10 2023 report.