Audit will help city address neighborhood parking issues

Columbia Missourian

COLUMBIA — The City of Columbia finished an audit of parked cars and spaces Saturday night in order to start making a plan to address parking overflow in neighborhoods surrounding downtown.

Volunteers counted how many spaces were occupied in selected areas and recorded the turnover when cars left the spots. The audit focused on campus, downtown and surrounding neighborhoods, including Benton-Stephens, North Central and East Campus.

The data, collected from 8 a.m. Thursday to 10 p.m. Saturday, will be sent to a consultant from Smart Growth America, who will come to Columbia later this year to help address parking issues in symposiums and forums with stakeholders and residents.

About 30 volunteers helped with the audit, and many of them took two or three shifts in order to cover all three days, said Leah Christian, a management fellow with the city manager's office.

"It's great to see a community come together and try to figure out parking issues," Christian said.

As downtown development continues, there are more people with cars to park. Many of them keep their vehicles in nearby neighborhoods.

"Because these neighborhoods are so close to downtown and campus, we've always had shoppers, employees, students and even staff members parking in our neighborhood," said Dan Cullimore, North Central Neighborhood Association president and audit volunteer. "After Brookside (on College) was developed, we saw a major increase in parking."

The North Central neighborhood proposed a residential parking permit program to make sure the residents had space to put their cars. The plan was implemented in the North Village Arts Distrcit, Cullimore said. But it wasn't enough to account for the parking increase citywide.

The problem won't be fixed unless a concrete policy is developed, he said. He said he hopes the audit will help.

"What I hope comes of it is a beginning of a city policy on transportation, transportation corridors and parking," Cullimore said. "Unless we have a full-fledged policy that addresses these issues, we are going to continue to have inconsistent parking plans."

Fixing the downtown area benefits all of Columbia, volunteer Alyce Turner said.

"You're bringing thousands of students downtown, which is great, but our parking situation is much different than it was three to four years ago," Turner said. "Our downtown is a nice downtown, a great walking downtown. But, sometimes you have to park to be able to walk downtown."

The District is an essential part of the community, Turner said.

"Giving money to the local economy is so important, so we need to keep downtown commuter friendly," Turner said.

Turner, who is also a member of the Public Transit Advisory Commission and the Environment and Energy Commission, said advertising the advantages of going downtown also would help. She noted how many people don't realize parking garages are free on the weekends.

MU Sophomore Amy Wasowicz, a Missouri Students Association  representative on the Mayor's Task Force on Pedestrian Safety, said students should care about this issue as well.

"I think I was the only student volunteer," Wasowicz said. "It would have been nice to see more students volunteer because we live here, too."

Everyone living in Columbia should care, Christian said.

"Parking affects every citizen — even citizens without cars," Christian said. "Columbia is growing very quickly — we're just over 100,000 citizens. When other cities hit that mark, they tend to grow more quickly than they did before. We need to learn to plan ahead and make considerations for all these aspects: pedestrians, public transportation, disabled parking, cyclists and drivers."

The data will be collected, finalized and sent off in about a week. After the data is analyzed by a consultant, there will be a community forum in the City Council chambers at the Daniel Boone City Building, 701 E. Broadway.

A stakeholder workshop is scheduled for 8 a.m. Sept. 23 in the building's Conference Rooms A&B.