The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Let's talk parking.

http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?action=post;board=36.0


At first I was tempted to post something like this
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAYgXwQVEAAgOjX.jpg)

But in fairness, broken meters and meters that don't take plastic are extremely frustrating. What's more, the money collected just goes to self-funding the meter system instead of into any kind of general revenue or dedicated downtown fund, making it feel like a shakedown. That sentiment is not helped by the flippant comment the assets management director makes at the end of the video included in the link.  The part that would be most alien to people moving from other cities is that there is no general parking permit for downtown residents.

The city should look into three things:

1) A dedicated sticker in the corner of the windshield for resident of that district/inside the IDL/etc. You could renew it once a year and charge $1,000 for it. The parking permit would exempt you from paying the meter anywhere in your zone or in DT.

2) ParkMobile (http://us.parkmobile.com/), or a similar app-based paying system. Each meter comes with a number on the side, you type that number into the app, select how long you want to park, and it charges your pre-loaded credit cards. It sends you a text or a banner alert when the time is running low and offers to re-up.

3) If your hourly rate and fine structure is so imbalanced that parkers would rather pay the fines then you have failed Running a City 101. Jack up the tickets to make them a stick. Offer carrots like the above options and everyone will pay the meters. Thus, generating revenue.

Proximity surface parking is becoming a problem, but on street parking is not the solution.

We need a combination of several things

1. Designated structured city parking
2. Transportation options to get people from the parking to their (multiple destinations)
3. City Codes that define what parking requirements are and what those lots look like inside the IDL

I've heard that the new Hartford Commons apartment complex at 2nd and Hartford will have no on site parking...this seems myopic to me if it's true.

I have never, ever, even when there are multiple large events simultaneously taking place downtown had trouble parking. Of course, that's with walking several blocks, but that should be expected in downtown. Downtown residents may have trouble finding permanent parking, but as for visitors, there absolutely is not any parking problem at all.

If Hartford Commons is able to help tenants find other areas in which they can park, I see no problem with not providing parking. Many other cities build apartments without dedicated parking. If we could get some decent public transport (even good buses) in at least the inner city of Tulsa we'd be even better off.

From the site plan I saw they were planning a parking garage along 2nd street and would go basically from where "Hartford Ave" is to Kenosha for that entire northern half of the block. It was going to be attached, no ground floor retail and it had no sort of architectural features either so it will be a very noticable parking structure. Now... they could have changed this since, but I don't see how someone like ARG would do a project that size with no parking.

I was under the assumption that they would provide parking, but had never seen anything confirming that.

Nevertheless, the misconception that downtown has no parking is bizarre. I seriously do not understand how one arrives at that conclusion. Is it because most buildings don't have a parking lot right in front?

So odd.  Millions of people every day walk/bike to work and to do errands a distance that would easily be from say Boston Ave Church to the Blue Dome.  I did when I lived in London for a while, every day, at least twice a day to and from work.  Most people walked a good distance from home to the local tube or bus station.  So surely they can walk at least as far to get to their car?

We just have not made the "cultural norm shift" here.  The frustrating thing is that if all those people that now live and work downtown would walk even just 3 or 4 or 5 blocks to and from home/work... heck all those customers, I would be opening stores left and right, we would have small grocery stores, and all kinds of shops downtown already, which would make it much easier to have everything you need downtown and not need a car in the first place.  Then add a trolley/bus service (instead of spending money on more parking garages or on your car) loop around downtown and to the Cherry Street- Brookside- Riverparks and the Gathering Place, decent rail/bus service to OKC-Dallas... you have it made.

Sad thing is that we will likely heed the silliness represented in this article and go the route of trying to have parking right near everything and thus kill any real, pedestrian lively, attractive urbanism from forming, (ala central Dallas which is basically still just "dense" non-pedestrian/non-bike able, traffic infested suburbia on steroids).

This comes down to two things, and neither are a "lack of parking"

1. There is a lack of AFFORDABLE, convenient parking in downtown. Now this is something probably every city deals with. I pay $110 a month for my parking spot for my apartment downtown, and typically I walk a few feet from the garage into the building. Guess what that's the price you pay for living in an urban environment. A parking spot in the garage at my apartment in DC was $300 a month to park on the top level (non-covered) and was $450 a month to park underground. Guess what? I sold my car and walked - which I preferred anyways. Street parking was about $200 a year if i remember correctly and that was per zone (DC had 8 different zones). The zone I lived in just north of the White House you'd have to drive around for 30-45 minutes sometimes to find a spot. I did this many times with my Car2go Smart Car which can squeeze into just about any spot so I can't imagine what it would be like for someone with a large car.

2. Built environment. Right now downtown just doesn't have much walkability yet. Guess what kills it? surface parking, it's a double edged sword. When I lived in DC I was lucky enough to have Whole Food outside the front door of my building. However, when I walked to class or work I typically walked 1 - 1 1/2 miles. The closest Metro station was 1/2 mile from my apartment. So I easily walked 3-4 miles a day. Sometimes after soccer I would walk from the National Cathedral back to my apartment. It was about 3 miles and would take me 45 mins or so. I did this because the built environment made the walks interesting.

_________

What scares me is the city has actually talked about building a new parking garage to "unlock" development potential in the Blue Dome area. Especially when we could spend this money to operate all the other garages downtown 24/7 (especially the city hall garage which is 1 block from the Blue Dome). Make the garages free after 6pm until 7am. Downtown residents can park and then drive to work (assuming they live outside of downtown). If they work downtown, well walk to work or pay up for a parking spot. I'd rather see the $60 million for a new parking garage go to giving every street downtown a ROAD DIET and making downtown incredible pleasant to walk around. That would spur way more development than 1 parking garage ever would.

Here here on the road diet thing.  IF the city wants to spend money building parking garages, I would say the better use for those funds would be for the road diet thing, also more parallel parking on more streets, and for goodness sakes think of how many trollies/busses for downtown and connecting elsewhere, we could have going with those kinds of funds (right now I and other businesses chip in to get the one we have).  Let private enterprise build the parking if they want, and they will.  Btw, every evening the 6 floors of parking right over my shop sits empty, even on "First Fridays"... have 4 or 5 trolleys or busses making the loop every 10 minutes and voila, my parking, those unused parking spots all over downtown are Brady Arts Parking.... and you help create a more pedestrian/transit friendly environment.

The city has to be the "grown up".

"I want parking nearby!" people say.

Well I want to eat nothing but pizza and ice cream.  But I know that will not be healthy for me long term, and that if I think about it what I really want is to be happy and healthy so what I will instead try to eat is mostly healthy food, that tastes good. And really I will truly be happier doing so.  That is the adult mature thing to do.

The city has to think like that too.  The city has to realize that even though people say they want parking right nearby, what they really want in an urban environment, if they think about it and know better, are healthy, pedestrian lively streets and transit and they are not going to get that on a junk food diet of parking garages.  No matter how yummy and delicious those parking garages are, long term, it's not going to make you happy, your going to have a struggling, sickly downtown.

I typically park in the garage at 1st and Main when I go to the Cain's, and I've never had to go past the first level to find a spot. Even on one of the Garth Brooks nights. And it's only $5. Plus, as you've said, there are many parking garages around downtown that close down after the workday. If those could be opened after hours we would have (at least) several hundred more parking spots suddenly available.

What you and LandArchPoke said is spot on. It's not that we need more parking, it's that we need more pedestrian friendly development to make walking more interesting. I would also love to see Tulsa really embrace biking as a form of transportation. We have a great trail system that already attracts people, now let's expand bike friendly infrastructure to our urban districts.

I agree with the points above and as resident of Riverview I never take my car downtown, I bike.

But...Tulsa has always had a car culture and that is not going to change overnight. We want people to come downtown from the suburbs, from other parts of the city or even for tourism and these people are going to bring their cars. It is important that they know where they can park cheaply and know that they can rely on some sort of mass transportation to get to multiple destinations and then back to their car safely. Parking in downtown is confusing to visitors. We need to correct this. I see people every day that do not know they can park on the street for free after 5PM and on weekends, I see them hovering over the parking meters and then drive away to park in a surface lot because they don't have cash to feed a meter that doesn't need to be fed.

Much of what you said is true.   But lets be careful.  Seems the discussion with many is that the main focus, indeed all of the focus is on having downtown cater to the suburbanites.  They will never be fully comfortable with downtown.  (Have had a couple of people when I mention parking in parking garages say "Ew, parking garages are scary and nasty.") you will never completely please them.  But in our zeal to make them happy and comfortable we often do things that make our downtown less attractive to urbanites as well.

 If anything downtown should first accommodate those who want the urban lifestyle (if Tulsa does not do it there and nearby, where will we?) and then give a not to the suburbanites.  The suburbanites have an ocean of "stuff for them" but we keep pushing away and losing thousands and thousands of urbanites because we ignore their wants and have practically nothing for them.   What kind of "city" only has suburban lifestyle options and no real urban ones?

Any new parking garages need to be VERY carefully thought out.  We can't afford to build any more ugly, Soviet era concrete blocks.  They kill urban spaces as much as surface parking lots.  Nobody wants to walk past a blank wall. So I would be opposed to any new parking garage that was not wrapped with street level retail (all sides, people!), and did not have a welcoming facade on the higher floors. Great cities have been doing this for years.  Tulsa has talked about it for years and never done it.  We have built parking garages and left one side open for "future retail."  Then we have dedicated those areas for surface parking, or expanded the parking garages, or built condos that LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THE SOVIET STYLE PARKING GARAGE that it was supposed to conceal.

By the way, if anyone cares, you should take a look at the proposed new zoning code. 

You'll notice a couple interesting things.  The landscaping requirements for off-street parking are specifically exempted in downtown. This is ridiculous!  If ever there was a place that should require landscaping--a place where we want people to walk, even if they have to pass a surface lot--it's downtown. 

I assume they didn't include this in the new zoning because when the issue came up last year (a proposed ordinance related to downtown demolitions was combined with a proposed ordinance for landscaping of surface parking lots), Little Bumgarner Jr threw a hissy fit and bullied everyone into rejecting the proposal.  Nobody even looked at the landscaping requirements, b/c they were so focused on the demolition restrictions.  (Sager--"I AM the Blue Dome!"--actually was opposed to the landscaping requirements.  I guess b/c it would have required him to improve his dusty gravel parking lots.)

Related to parking garages, there is one interesting sentence in the proposed new zoning code: 25.060-E:  "Parking structures must be designed to visually conceal parking at ground-floor level and the second floor level through the use of architectural detailing or liner buildings."

I'm not a zoning lawyer, so I don't know if this is sufficient.  It's a big step forward for Tulsa, but how do we define "conceal?"  I'd like to understand more about this, but I'm hopeful.

Again, I agree. I hate the surface parking in downtown, and I view the parking structures as a necassary evil. I don't use them and I won't use them. I personally want a working structure or public greenspace to replace every single lot and and I want every parking structure to be mixed use (like the one on Main Street only less ugly). I strongly support a code that enforces landscaping, lighting, security, paving, and demarcation from the sidewalk for any off street parking.

However, downtown is everyone's downtown...it's not just mine. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be locomotive and they need options too.

I think making visitors more aware of where they can park is more important and more practical than building more parking. We aren't at that point yet where parking is actually a problem, rather people think it's a problem. I assume much of it has to do with what you said, that visitors simply don't know where they can park.

Speaking of parking, what is the deal with that lot in the middle of Blue Dome? Is the owner demanding some extremely high price? Development is filling in on all sides now. Blue Dome would really feel like a complete area rather than a work in progress if some decent new construction filled that hole.

I'm not a big proponent of landscaping within the IDL.  Trees and bushes have a tough time in the dense urban environment at the level we require suburban development.  Now, window boxes or hanging baskets are a different story.

At Up with Trees we have planted 550 trees downtown in the last three years. We spent a lot of money building large containers to grow them and plan to heavily water them for the next five years. We have a lot of experience in planting in bad soil. Highway sides are a mixture of trash rock and fill covered in dirt.

Downtowns shouldn't have surface parking lots, but if they do, they should be nice. 

Downtown Salt Lake City does an amazing job with landscape requirements for surface lots, and as a result, you often don't realize you're walking past one.

Here's an example of what a surface parking lot can be:
(https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8740/16687479219_0984a8b576.jpg)

And here's what it looks like from above:
(https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7281/16872598371_5490e24de9.jpg)

Compare that to Tulsa where there are no landscaping requirements for downtown surface lots:

(https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3437/3701994422_b94fc9e920.jpg)

(https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2632/3701184929_9a31a86364.jpg)

In addition, Tulsa's street trees suffer b/c they are never planted in wide green spaces where they can establish roots and receive water and nutrients.  We plant them in little holes and wonder why they're so weak and diseased.  Personally, I don't think we should plant trees near buildings downtown, but we should require wide landscaped buffers around all surface lots.  This would beautify the parking blight, and also give trees the space they need to grow.

They just planted dozens of trees in the Blue Dome area this past winter.  Many are planted in 3 x 3 spaces, next to buildings and under utility lines. Not smart.

The new downtown trees are going to live. Up with Trees spent a lot of time and money redoing those planter boxes and selected trees that should be fine even under those power lines. Today we are finishing up the end of phase three along Detroit around 8th street.

Is the way street trees are planted in Tulsa any different than how they are planted in other cities? They seem to do just fine everywhere else. Personally, I like trees planted next to buildings along the sidewalks, as long as they are well maintained and trimmed.

Requiring heavy landscaping in surface lots downtown makes them seem too permanent, IMO. I'd rather look at treeless lots with the hope that they will soon be redeveloped than "pretty" parking spaces.

I want links to their landscape ordinances and examples from other cities. I just don't have the time to gather them.

Please PonderInc? (you were always my favorite)

I get what your saying, but don't think that the value of the property would be that much greater for someone to redevelop it if the parking lot has trees or not.  However I do think that it would greatly help with downtowns "walkability".  I would be more likely to encourage people to say walk from my shop to Blue Dome if all the parking lots along the way had landscaping like in those images. I think walking would be a lot more friendly and help businesses like mine (that would then be successful enough to perhaps begin building on those lots).

I see that point as well. Perhaps it's because in my own head I see the vision for downtown and what it will soon be. Visitors see it for what it is, and shady parking lots with broken asphalt and faded lines are certainly not inviting.

By the way, I stopped by your store back in December. I think we ended up buying some candy canes. I enjoyed looking around and flipping through the books full of Tulsa's Art Deco history. I will likely be back to buy one of those sometime soon. The museum exhibits in the Philcade were great as well. I would love to see the museum be expanded and have it's own space someday. I was with some people from out of town and they were also very impressed with the little window exhibits, especially the ones concerning demolished buildings.