Parking study shows need for long-term parking

The lack of longterm parking for people who work in downtown Springfield was identified as the biggest parking problem in a recent study.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20111121/NEWS02/711219884

Published November 21, 2011 in the Rutland Herald

Parking study shows need for long-term parking

By SUSAN SMALLHEER
Staff Writer

SPRINGFIELD — The best step Springfield can take to improve the downtown parking situation is to provide long-term parking for downtown employees, a consultant hired by Springfield On The Move said.

Paula Green of BGreen Landscape Architects of Springfield told a standing-room-only meeting Thursday at the town hall that her surveys and parking studies revealed that was the biggest problem.

Too many employees park in the immediate downtown area because they have to be able to dash out and move their cars, since the vast majority of parking is two-hours only.

Sometimes it comes down to perception versus actual, Green said.

One surprising result from Green’s study was that visitors to downtown Springfield feel that there isn’t a parking problem, while people who work in the downtown area think it’s a major problem, she said.

Green said surveys were handed out to employers, business owners and downtown workers. Green also surveyed people visiting the downtown area, as well as doing traffic counts at different times of the day and night.

If there was long-term parking elsewhere, people wouldn’t park on Main Street and close by, she said.

Green also said new signs, directing people to parking, was also a good short-term solution to the problem.

Longer term solutions involve buying land and designating it for long-term parking, she said.

There are only eight, eight-hour spaces in the immediate downtown area, downtown business owners and workers told Green.

While there is a long-term parking lot on Valley Street, the sidewalk leading to the lot, and nighttime lighting, is terrible, they added.

Green was hired by the downtown group to assess the parking situation in an effort to attract more business to the downtown area.

Bob Rousse, the Springfield Police Department’s part-time parking enforcement officer, said that many business owners park in front of their businesses, and go out every two hours to move their cars one space.

Rousse said another big problem was that state employees from the state office complex on Mineral Street weren’t using their parking lot and instead were using the four-hour parking on Mineral Street.

Rousse said you couldn’t ban state employees from using that lot, which is a longer walk from their building, but not up a steep set of stairs.

The state employee parking lot is located on the banks of the Black River, down several flights of stairs from the state office buildings.

Several downtown owners said that the town had actually lost parking spaces in the reconfiguration of parking a few years ago.

Town Manager Robert Forguites said that state safety standards require enough sight-distance around crosswalks, effectively eliminating many parking spaces.

If the town wants crosswalks, he said, the result is fewer parking spaces.

Green is working with the Dufresne Group on the parking study and will present her final report in December to Springfield On The Move.

Carol Lighthall, executive director of the group, said that the goal was to boost business in the downtown area, and parking is often viewed as the first important step.

“We want a vibrant downtown. But we don’t have a magic wand,” she said.