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City-Hired Consultant's "Parking Study" Offers These Conclusions About Downtown & Alamitos Beach Parking Issues


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(Oct. 18, 2015, 8:38 a.m.) -- A City Hall-hired consultant's finalized "parking study" is now publicly visible here and agendized for City Council consideration on Oct. 23. The report consists of 116 pages of text, charts and graphics; with data attachments it runs to 865 pages.

On Oct. 23, the Council can vote to direct city management to take certain actions in response, or conduct direct further study, or vote to (city staff recommended) "receive and file" (take no immediate action on the report, leave staff to further implement some currently implementable measures (restriping/diagonal parking) and bring other measures to a future Council meeting for future consideration.)

The grassroots neighborhood group, Traffic And Parking Solutions (TAPS), whose litigation produced a settlement that required the City to hire a professional firm to conduct the parking study, is currently reviewing the finalized results and TAPS' comments are pending (and will be added here.) Eric Gray, the 2nd dist. Council candidate who narrowly finished second in 2016 to now-incumbent Jeannine Pearce, says the Council can and should "start implementing some of the study’s suggestions as immediately as they can" (details below.)

[Scroll down for further.]

As summarized in a city staff agendizing memo by Director of Development Services Linda Tatum, the parking study concluded that overall utilization of downtown off-street parking is low but Alamitos Beach parking "is considerably more constrained" as "[o]ccupancy rates for onstreet parking measured in excess of capacity during evenings and weekends, due to the predominance of residential land uses. Very limited off-street parking exists in the area although that limited supply is under-utilized."

[City staff memo text summarizing study findings] While vehicle ownership is lower in this portion of the City than Citywide, the supply of parking is nonetheless insufficient. This parking shortage is primarily caused by historic buildings in the area being constructed with little to no off-street parking. The majority of Alamitos Beach homes and apartments were constructed prior to 1943, with a plurality constructed in the 1920s. No parking requirement existed during this period of construction. A secondary finding in the Study is that those residents who do have access to a garage are oftentimes using that garage for storage; thus, rending the space unusable for parking and increasing the demand for off-street parking spaces. In the online survey for the Study, over 20 percent of people with access to a garage reported using their garage for storage instead of parking.

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The study's recommendations (short, medium and long term) focus on "high demand for on-street parking, under-utilization of off-street parking, and overall parking supply constraints" in Alamitos Beach.

Examples of short-term measures include restriping and other measures to increase the supply of on-street parking, such efforts are already underway on Broadway and other strategic locations. Wayfinding and vigorous parking enforcement are other short-term measures. Medium term measures include, for example, advanced parking meter technology and dynamic metered-parking pricing. Some longer-term measures include the use of parking lifts and robotic parking structures, benefit or special assessment districts to fund parking improvements, and improved transit or shuttle service that would allow those who own a car, but routinely travel by other means, to park remotely in a less constrained location.

City staff (Departments of Development Services and Public Works) recommend "improving wayfinding and adding on-street parking through restriping, are already underway. Those items that can be accomplished within existing funding and work programs will continue without the need for further City Council approval."

Other recommendations require further analysis and may have fiscal implications beyond what is available in the PSIF. These items will return to the City Council for the appropriate authorization, funding and policy consideration. Many of the mid- and long-term recommendations for Alamitos Beach may require Coastal Permits and may be constrained by the City's Local Coastal Program and the California Coastal Act. As the Study serves as a starting point and not a final plan or list of measures, Development Services and Public Works, will also continue to pursue new measures to address community parking concerns whether or not those measures appear in the Study. Staff will provide the City Council with updates regarding these improvements at appropriate regular intervals.

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Former 2nd dist. Council candidate Eric Gray recommends that the Council direct implementation of some of the study’s suggestions as immediately as they can, including

[Gray immediate measures]

1. Creating a Parking Manager position to consolidate all policy of parking under one division. The role could include creating parking districts, creating a transit/trolley route to and from remote parking lots in the Alamitos Beach neighborhood, and taking a block by block sweat equity approach to creating more parking spaces city wide.

  • 2. Work to implement zoning policy which includes off street parking city wide. Two examples could include taking empty lots and turning them into residential parking in parking impacted neighborhoods and planning and building mixed use development/parking structures in places like Uptown Long Beach that create economic development.
  • 3. Increase wayfinding signage in the Downtown area to promote where parking is located.
  • Parking issues are a chronic, daily neighborhood impact for residents of Alamitos Beach and downtown-adjacent areas. The parking study doesn't dwell on 1980's City Council decisions (opposed by neighborhood residents at the time) that allowed developers to build "crackerbox" (cheap multi-unit) apartments that brought increased density and displaced single family homes in previously stable neighborhoods. Residents at the time warned it would destabilize and damage neighborhoods and overburden city services; developers, supportive staff and supportive Councilmembers argued it would help alleviate a housing shortage and bring growth and prosperity. The "crackerbox" enabling actions are now widely regarded as one of LB's historic self-inflicted wounds.

    However during the recent bruising citywide Land Use Element (LUE) debate, city staff said the City's subsequent response -- downzoning of neighborhoods to prevent further density increases -- now contributes to the chronic parking problem by preventing new developments that would be subject to newer parking requirements.

    On the issue of new parking requirements, the parking study states in part:

    Over the last few years, several cities in California have begun to implement more sustainable land use and transportation policies to accommodate for multi-modal transportation, particularly in central business districts (Downtowns) or areas around transit routes and stops. While most cities still require developers to satisfy minimum parking standards, cities across the U.S. and globally have begun to remove parking minimums and instead, have been establishing parking maximums within their municipal code. The comparative analysis of Long Beach to similar Southern California cities includes Santa Monica, whose parking requirement shown in Figure 3.3 and Figure 3.4 are the City's maximum parking standards.

    All other parking requirements shown are minimum parking requirements by each respective city. Within Southern California, downtown or transit-oriented development areas in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Long Beach have similar parking requirements for new developments, as shown in Figure 3.3. Long Beach’s City-wide parking requirement, which applies to the Alamitos Beach study area, is also similar to other cities, as shown in Figure 3.4. [Parking study, p. 19]

    Developing.

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