Regarding a downtown parking study presented by IP Services.

They are here tonight to present the flip notes about the findings of their services of their study, excuse me, as is city engineer Brad Pease, Henry Mestevsky, and Sergei as legal counsel.

James Bye Park here who's gonna uh prepare this presentation.

You have uh study kind of outline uh in front of you as well for the presentation of all, so I'll let James take it away.

Thanks.

Good evening, counsel.

Uh my name is James O'Connell.

I serve as the director of operations for IP services.

Um, and thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight.

Um I'll walk you through this presentation of the parking study, what we reviewed, what we observed, and what those findings suggest about how Carmel's parking system is functioning today and how it can continue to support downtown as it grows.

This is primarily a briefing.

Uh no decisions are coming out of this immediately, but my goal is to share what we observed so we can help frame how Carmel can stay ahead of future pressure rather than reacting to it later.

Um, like I said, the purpose of this is to share findings, provide context on the current system performance, and outline implementation concepts for future consideration.

This is simply an opportunity to review these findings and again add to the planning context.

So, core finding.

The central finding is that Carmel is not in a system wide parking capacity crisis.

However, pressure is beginning to concentrate in specific areas and during specific peak periods, particularly midtown and along Main Street, during the evening dining and major events.

This study showed that available capacity still exists across the system, but it's not as it's not always visible or intuitive to visitors.

And this is a stage where successful downtowns typically begin planning ahead, not because something is wrong, but because growth is working.

As far as the scope of the study goes, we reviewed system utilization across public and private supply during weekdays and weekend patterns.

We looked at curb usage and turnover, the development pipeline impacts, as well as event and seasonal variation.

Uh the goal was to understand how the system is actually behaving over time, not just how it feels at peak moments.

Most challenges seem to be localized and perception driven.

The peak demand concentrates in those midtown garages while city center and other garages still do have capacity.

Visitors perceive shortage when that front door spaces are full, even when there is capacity remaining in that garage.

So the opportunity is better visibility of the existing supply to help shape that redistribution.

Like I said, visitors prioritize immediate destination parking.

With that limited visibility into leftover availability, as well as inconsistent curb turnover along the highest demand blocks, those peak moments continue to shape long-term perception, and the result is people arriving circling around the downtown and frustration and anecdotes about challenges to parking when we we see that there's still availability.

We can do that by improving visibility, turnover, and coordination, especially during citywide events.

We want to preserve public access along the streets to support business vitality.

And we hope that Carmel continues its disciplined planning model as it relates to growth when it's needed, or could building when it's needed.

So the plan, or at least our study outlined three tracks of three courses of action that will help alleviate some of these challenges.

Track one was to improve the curb management, focusing on the highest demand blocks during peak periods.

Many of the most visible challenges occur at the curb rather than inside garages.

Improving turnover helps maintain that short-term access for retail and dining while encouraging longer stays to use garages.

This improves both access and the overall visitor experience.

Another part of track one was valet coordination.

Valet is an important amenity in a walkable downtown.

The goal is not to restrict valley operations, but to ensure they operate consistently within a shared curb environment.

Clear expectations support fairness, safety, and traffic flow.

This is about coordination and clarity rather than expansion or restriction.

Along track two, the goal is to make that capacity visible.

One of the fastest ways to improve the visitor experience is to let them know where there's available parking.

When drivers can easily see where capacity exists, circulation decrease circulation decreases, and the system feels more intuitive.

In effect, this adds usable capacity without constructing new supply.

And I think a good example of that is the downtown airport.

And then track three is planning ahead.

Today certain flexible areas help absorb peak and event demand, but as the redevelopment and development continues, some of that flexibility will change.

While there's no immediate need for new structured parking, future strategically located capacity will likely become appropriate as downtown continues to grow.

The key is planning deliberately, not reacting later.

I've highlighted in the report, I've highlighted the financially disciplined approach.

Um the recommendations follow that.

Maximizing the existing system first, phase improvements carefully, avoid premature capital construction, and maintain Carmel's strong fiscal discipline.

This ensures future capacity is added at the right place and at the right time.

Like I've said, key themes include improving curb toneer or enhancing visibility, coordinating valley operations, and monitoring long-term supply as redevelopment occurs.

These are planning themes, not necessarily actions that need to happen immediately.

Yeah.

In closing, Carmel is in a strong position.

There's no immediate capacity crisis.

There is an opportunity, though, to improve access and clarity.

And there's an opportunity to plan deliberately for future needs.

Downtown Carmel is successful in growing.

This is about staying ahead of the success and not reacting to problems.

And with that, I have a couple of appendix items just to help contextualize things for you know if you haven't seen the full report.

But with that, I'm happy to take on any questions.

When we all kind of a lot of this got kicked off in a homeowner's house just east of rangeline.

It says consult the CRC, and it talks about parking garages, but a lot of it was we're hoping to get data on how residents in the downtown area, whether that's uh what we used to have in regards to residential parking permits and um how do we protect them in front of their homes or the availability of park somewhat close to their homes because what we're seeing is a lot of bleed out into residential streets.

Um I don't know if you can speak on that or if that can be another appendix to this.

Yeah.

Well, appreciate the question, Matthew.

Um, that was actually something we we dug into early on in this project, but eventually trimmed it out of the reports as it wasn't as actual as some of these garage signals.

Um it seems that we we collected data on it, and it basically the data just pointed to it being bad.

You know, the the streets are full, people aren't I'm sorry, the adjacent the on-street parking is full.

They're they're staying extended amounts of time.

Um it's really where the LPR uh and enforcement um recommendation comes into play.

But when we kind of trace that backwards, what can we do about it?

It's it seems the signals are pointing to the garages.

People are looking for that on-street easy to find parking, and they're not actually using the resources that you guys have constructed for that purpose.

And so again, I I feel I that throughout the course of this, um making that capacity visible to redirect that behavior helps that what that flow that we're seeing into the neighborhoods.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Excuse me.

So a couple of things I want to piggyback on something Matt Matt said, and that is we have parking, what do you call them?

Parking uh permits for the adjacent neighborhoods, especially to I'll just use Sophia Square as an example.

Um so I guess my question to you would be you're you're saying the LPRs would be the answer for that particular situation, or what what are you saying there?

Because I I think the garages are obviously the focus of the of the study, but I guess in that case, where does that fall in with the LPRs?

So as you know, throughout this project, I understood that the passes system was sort of not being I don't know, I don't know if residents were buying in completely and getting their passes or it wasn't being enforced.

Uh but I understand that that wasn't a there wasn't a lot of levers we could pull uh relating to changing that behavior.

Now, as it relates to the same concept, uh being whitelisted to to park on a certain street because your plate you've submitted your plate is is something that we do and and other properties uh to to manage and triage where people should be and where they should not be.

And so you know the stick uh to to redirect the behavior is an option.

Um then I'd like to then go back to the signages you were talking about in the study, it showed that it broke down the the costs of these electric signs or or signages for people to know where to go and pointing in the right direction.

And um, if memory serves, part of that was uh I think it was around 100,000.

Am I wrong?

The cost for so it can be 50 to up to a quarter million.

It's just there's a continuum.

Um you don't necessarily need the quarter million dollar solution, it really depends on the design, um the access to the um utilities and the kind of concrete structure that you have to work into, but it is a very affordable uh way to integrate.

Uh it just depends on how specific is the city about its vendor.

Right, and I guess specifically, sorry I don't mean to bogart the conversation here, but um I guess specifically it would that would require the private parking garages to have some sort of counters on them, and I'm not sure how many of our parking private parking garages actually have counters on them.

So it doesn't, I'm not sure.

Is that a solution?

Is that something I guess that's a question for Henry is can we work with the private parking garage owners to get them on board with putting some of this integrating some of this technology?

Thank you.

Uh Henry Mustawski Carnel's Redevelopment Director.

Um, as you know, the two garages that the city worked on, the Tarkenton Civic Square do have those counters.

Um in all projects that are being negotiated now, um that is a requirement.

But in what's under construction today, some of those will have parking counters, some of them don't.

So I think the the conversation that you just had was more about retrofitting parking counters into existing garages, and because they're all kind of different, the money there can vary.

Thank you.

Um briefly, I'm normally an acronym guy, yeah, but the someone else brought the question up here.

LPR.

License plate recognition.

Okay, thank you.

Um I'll defer.

I know others have questions, but when you get the chance, if you could go through the data in the appendix, yeah, um, and just kind of as you kind of describe it to us or kind of summarize what it how you interpret it, how it relates to some of the recommendations or conclusions that you have.

But I know others probably got questions, so I don't know if you want to finish with that or move on to the questions.

Counselor Taylor, thank you.

Thank you.

So a lot of these results is sort of what I thought we may see.

And the big one is enforcement to increase curb turnover.

We have time limits on many of our spaces.

We rarely enforce it in the city of Carmel.

I wanted to dive into that a little bit, because I think what we have done so well in the city of Carmel is hide our parking structure so you don't have an ugly parking structure.

And the psychology around using parking structures and parking structures are interesting, right?

I think you know, Mayor Brainerd would always say somebody be willing to walk, you know uh half a mile across a Walmart parking lot, but to go park in a parking garage and not park right out inside of a venue, they feel strange about it.

And we've been very good at hiding our garages, but also been very thoughtful in uh not having gaudy wayfinding.

Um so there has to be a way for us to find wayfinding that fits the look and feel of what residents expect, but also can direct people into those parking garages.

Um I'm really interested in the in the valet coordination.

I know President Snyder is well, but I wanted to talk more about enforcement, and then maybe maybe some next steps.

Um we also know that there's many who use our garages who there's also time limits in our garages, and they sit and they park there and it's they're in there forever.

Um but the study didn't really hit on this is what are the next steps, and to though though we do understand that there's some unused capacity in our garages, we still behavior is not going to change overnight, and we still have a lot of residences in the central core that really struggle with uh people taking up parking right in front of their home so their guests can.

So, you know, I I would really like to see eventually a more planned approach and maybe some solutions.

What um where do we where do we provide further restrictions?

And then how do we, and then what are what are some solutions, options, and costs to enforce.

You know, um the city of Noblesville has a problem in their downtown square.

So they they outsourced parking enforcement, right?

Instead of having you know a law enforcement officer driving them around with an L VR, they've out they've outsourced it to a company that doesn't.

And I can tell you if you because they go to the downtown Noblesville a lot, if you park more than 10 minutes past the two-hour parking limit, you are going to get a ticket.

And then it quickly quickly changes behavior, and I'm now park in the parking garage right next behind Uptown Cafe when I go down there, right?

Um I don't know if we eventually as a uh or engineering has a recommendation or Henry has a recommendation to take this to the next step, but regardless of changing behaviors is only gonna happen through enforcement.

And so we don't have a strategy other than using one of um one of our officers who's on street patrol to enforce parking right now, and that's probably not the highest and best use for for that officer.

So I would love to see at some point us look at where do we provide more restrictions, and then most importantly, what's the best solution to enforce our parking?

Because that will change behavior, and that will solve a lot of our our problems.

And Henry, just uh I didn't quite hear you said so, and the new garages that we're negotiating now.

So for Sinium 3, some of these other garages, we are we're requiring the uh parking management system into those garages?

Yes, on all the on all the new ones, the one under construction that's gonna have it is the portrait on the ATD site, the Subunkland project.

So we're just looking at the same signage that the other two have.

We generally let them pick who their parking company is so long as it can feed to our IT that we can put it on the same kind of program.

And I will similarly say that there's been an ongoing conversation between CRC engineering and our planning friends about additional kind of not electronic but additional parking signage that can better direct uh towards existing garages.

And does this data feed what where does it so for the public to know where can they go to to find where there's um opportunities of park in those garages?

Do they have to download an app, do they go to the city website, or they have to drive by the parking garage to determine?

I believe the the big comment the big answer is IT is still working on a way to pull all the data into some platform that shows it.

And what's important as we talk to garages that come up is that that data feed is usable, so Morgan's in every conversation that we have.

Okay.

Today, I don't believe it is on an app, but if you're driving up to either Civic Square or Targeting Garages, there are the menu blade signs that show how many empty spaces are on each floor.

Yeah, but it would be great to eventually as we progress as a city, there's some place that somebody can go.

So they don't go to the garage to try to find a spot, they can plan their parking ahead of time.

Um 10th is an app that IT is working on, it's just not ready today.

Okay.

Um then the I mean, so the problem is is when we get to the data, the valet use of our private street parking and other parking are at the core high density times of parking need.

And so I hope that engineering and the council administration will look at you know how we're gonna address those are those are parking spaces paid by public tax dollars being used by a private entity for private business purpose, and they're making money off of it.

Um so I'm really interested to see what type of solutions we come up with there.

Thank you.

Yeah, I address a couple of things.

Uh as far as the enforcement, uh we've been in meetings before earlier this summer about that.

So I think that was our first steps.

We've taken steps since then, sort of in parallel with this report coming out, as you said, enforcement was of kind of an obvious answer.

Um the police department advertised for a position uh for parking enforcement specifically.

And are looking at the system to um the camera system or uh to enforce that, the LPR system.

Uh so that's already moving as far as next steps.

Um that seemed like the Carmel Way versus Denton's or something where you would hire it out.

Uh so that's kind of the path we're on right now.

Um then your other question, what was your last question?

Oh, was it valet?

Um, yeah, we obviously have some great suggestions and framework from them, uh including charging, obviously, for those uh public space spaces if they're being used, um, and that's something we'll work with the council on uh framework and ordinance moving forward.

But enforcement on that is key to this uh LPR as well.

Um coming up with something for the uh valet partners.

All right.

Um I apologize, I was uh late getting back into town, so I may have missed a few things, but just a couple of thoughts.

Um appreciate all your work, thank you for doing that.

Um the couple of things.

Um enforcement I thought was right now being handled by community service officers.

And I thought we just added in the last budget.

I thought we actually were expanding that force.

So um so I guess my question is is anyone other than the um officer that's on duty in that district, is there anyone else that is focused on um enforcing parking today?

Um I can only sort of speak answer.

I don't I would have to uh yeah, with legal to get the exact answer on the I've seen some people, some people have come into the office about getting tickets.

Uh we all know it's very lax the enforcement, but uh we've had some officers usually uh my assumption is it's responding to complaints.

You know, this person is parked here and they come and specifically are targeting versus noticing some sort of parking.

Um that's been one of our police officers or community police officers.

All right.

And does the data that you collected, uh you know, you probably said it, so I'm I'm just gonna have to ask it.

Um, does it show that our parking garages do not have capacity or they do have enough capacity for our downtown area?

It depends on the time of day and day of the year.

Okay, give me um give me a percentage of the time when we're okay versus we're not okay.

Uh Friday, Saturday nights at peak, the midtown corridor is very stressed.

Uh it signals that you need more parking.

Okay.

Um, does it justify building an entire garage just for a few hours of stress, or does you benefit more by redirecting some of that capacity?

Uh or setting rules that people working need to park on the upper levels?

Like there's there's there's levers to pull to to help things in the shorter term.

Uh is one of those levers um getting the uh winter storage of my favorite convertible MG that I'm too cheap to park in a storage unit or my boat or the trailer I saw.

Um did this study address the obvious that there are people who I believe are misusing that.

Now I suppose there's an apartment dweller that has a boat, but there's an awful lot of um vehicles that never move that I suspect are not the apartment owners.

But so do we have any date on that?

Can I s can I chime in on that?

Um just for for anyone listening that are hearing this kind of for the first time, there are a number of s uh different questions that this parking study addresses.

And so in the last couple minutes, we're kind of jumping between the how we deal with the on-street parking that are in the city of right-of-way that really belong to the city and how we make sure there's proper turnover there.

James talked about that.

And then uh almost a wholly separate issue where most of our garages are contractual relationship with private entities, they give the redevelopment commission some rights to um set rules on what happens there.

So in those instances, what happens when people are parking their boats in spaces for months at a time.

So in those public private contractual relationships, CRC is really active.

Before someone in those garages can put up a sign that says that sets any rules, C or C must approve those.

So, like an example in the rail yard garage, it says if you're here for longer than 72 hours, you will get towed.

What usually happens when operators see an issue is they come to me and we make sure the sign is right to get to tow the people need to be towed.

There are many times where those boats that you're talking about are indeed the residences, and so operationally the uh apartment users that then also have the garages don't necessarily want to mess with that.

There have certainly been other times where I can remember specifically a garage owner came to me and there was a guy parking their boat, and we tracked down the guy and he lived across the street in a place that charged him for a parking spot, so he just put his boat in one of the free garages.

So I met with that guy and he got his boat out the next day.

And so in on those kind of case-by-case basis, the CRC is really involved on the private garage side.

I just don't want that confused to confuse the city's enforcement and the right-of-way separate issue.

Well, yeah, I mean I I was just thinking, okay, if we're saying that we're stressed on Fridays and Saturdays in our parking garages, I'd like to start with the most basic thing and to make sure that all those spaces are available to people who really need them.

Um First Street Southwest, first street Southwest, I believe is a good example of um where enforcement is badly needed because it's clearly marked loading and unloading only for servicing the commercial um the commercial businesses and uh routinely um on Thursday, I believe it was when I went over there, they're all full with with cars.

And there it's clearly marked 15 minutes.

Um and then there's the three hour and the two hour where I know that's being abused.

So in my opinion, the parking study probably didn't have to show me this, but I hope it raises enough awareness that we've got to do a better job of now managing the parking that we have so that it is available to everyone fairly.

So that the those and then I'll read the study since I was late.

Can I sorry, could I point one more thing out?

So the the parking study, while it finds that there doesn't need to be a brand new 500 space garage built right now, it does make a recommendation that as redevelopment continues to occur that we use those as opportunities to enhance uh parking as those projects happen.

It does have that finding in it.

In fact, it mentions right behind what could be a beautiful food hall partnership with a parking garage.

Um I'm gonna run through my questions and then I'd like to get to Tony's data request.

Um yeah, we are going all over the place, but I think hopefully you guys are taking this and then kind of know where our heads are at and can come back with the more information in the areas that we've asked about.

Um I don't know if that's a who's running point on this, but you, Brad?

Okay.

Um I I did have a question uh from the fire union about our parking garages.

Are we going to start having them be able to accept our emergency vehicles?

I brought that up.

Several several months ago, uh, this was unsolicited request, um more of a question.

Um as far as new parking garages, we have a fireman on the review for those and can make those comments.

But we heard that when you made that earlier this summer.

Thank you.

I've had a there's a gentleman most of us are buddies with, I think.

Um everybody knows him, but we we're having a conversation, he was asking about this.

And um in regards to ballet parking, he was like, hey man, I've got you know 12 private park I I've got 12 parking spots that you know, my business closes at five.

Like I'd be happy to run it out to ballet.

Like, can we kind of do a private partnership helps some of our local companies make a few extra bucks and freeze up some expanded parking for ballet?

Yeah, and in addition to the enforcement, which is certainly that first step, and then we can uh work with our police department on First Avenue and other specific places that we really see issues on our target, so appreciate that feedback.

The valet we can run in parallel at the same time if that's something that is in land use, or we want to put in land use as far as forming the ordinance and how that would work.

Um excellent.

Because it's it's I struggle with every other city in the world you go to.

I mean, these valet guys are hoofing it a quarter mile, sprinting to get your car, and ours are literally taking your car and not moving it and then want paid for it.

Um really exploring technology that might work with existing needs or future needs that we might have as a city, uh as a technology that might integrate just into our vehicles, period.

I mean, I've got depending on what city I'm in, my car dashboard does different things and lets me know where parking garages are, and one of them tells me how many spaces are in parking garage, you know, two blocks ahead.

Um those are my just thoughts um for consideration.

If you could um go through the data.

The Tony requested, please.

Yeah.

Thank you, Matt, and Mr.

Taylor, and all and all the questions that came up.

Um I feel the presentation was definitely abbreviated.

There's a lot more detail in the report uh relating to LPR costs of insourcing and outsourcing.

Exactly the same sorts of issues of people staying in the garages for a length of time.

That was something we noted, Mr.

Jeff.

Um it's and then I think uh Mr.

Taylor had a point about a uh that you can leave your vehicle parked and and you know you won't get a ticket.

Um however, we've all been trained that if we speed on North Keystone, we're gonna get pulled over.

So we just need to set that expectation and re so that people know that if they leave their vehicle they'll get parked.

I from the CRC's perspective, uh I can share stories that certain tenants or certain developers specifically never wanted um enforcement outside their retail establishments because they would rather to them uh a ticket for one of their patrons would result in in some in in uh a pretty negative response.

So this is very much about changing people's uh behaviors and uh just because we do something a certain way ten years ago and it was free rain on parking, doesn't mean it's gonna be like that going forward.

Mr.

Green, um the the data.

I I selected basically two slides just to kind of illustrate the point, but not uh go too deep.

Um so the bar the bar graphs on the bottom, um, those show net entries versus and net access.

The line between them is like the net change.

So how many people came in in that hour, how many people left in that hour, and is the sum of that making the occupancy go up or down?

And so you can see around two o'clock, Sophia Square starts to build uh above its comfort point on the evenings.

And that line, that out of line represents 85% line, and so above that it feels really full, you're going to the lower level of Sophia to find any spots.

Uh so why 85%?

Is that kind of the industry standard or is that a target for us?

It accommodates for both reserved parking as well as the ability to find parking easily.

Um after it in a garage, it's actually slightly lower.

It helps us kind of normalize between on-street and off-street, but in a garage environment where you can't see as far anything beyond 85% and you feel like it's full and you can't find your circling.

This is assuming there's not a this many spaces on every on every floor sign out front.

Right.

Correct.

In the absence of information, yeah.

And and this is also in kind of the next slide as well.

Um I love this one.

Um often we're event-driven, you know, so this isn't the events at all.

This is just kind of average data.

No, I mean this this shows a typical uh Saturday uh in Carmel.

Um, and you I think what I really love about this one is it shows the and as you go down the hours of the day across the properties, you can see what garages are loading first, and how once they kind of saturate, people start turning to other properties, and you can kind of see those start increasing faster.

Um now the red, kind of going back to one of Council Warrell's earlier questions.

Um the force the red 468-447.

Um so what's the the color, you know?

It's to draw attention to the relative loading, uh that that those hours are the busiest time uh of that Saturday.

Okay.

And um how's that relate to kind of that 85% line that you had on you know, just specifically for Sophia?

How's that, you know, so we can see the danger areas, but how's what's the real capacity impact?

So um a lot of that stuff is in the appendix.

Yeah.

And but and they have measured numbers, uh, but if I had to guess, that probably indicates 70, 80% across Carmel.

Okay.

Without and also kind of in the the other slides that you have uh that that like a look through.

Um this is a snapshot.

Everything's kind of a snapshot of the way it is today.

Is uh there any projections on you know, once you know the other parking garages come online and all the other apartments are kind of filled and and build out you know, how to kind of foresee um you know what other decisions we might have to make.

Yeah, so there um part of the study includes some some growth modeling and recommendations about the size of increment needed.

Um can I can I step in?

Um there's a general assumption that as new redevelopment projects come on with structured parking components, that they're gonna park themselves, but they're not gonna provide a whole bunch of extra parking unless there's incentive for that extra parking.

But as there's this kind of rising tide that occurs with the next um five projects, if you will, it's gonna reduce in downtown Carmel being more popular and even more people for these event specific things.

And so the recommendation to add capacity when there's time to add capacity is really dealing with that, that one project at a time supports itself, but even on that chart, you see that like there's an event around city center that's pushing that city center parking up uh that necessarily like Monon and Maine and Main Street isn't necessarily feeling.

And then at other times you can see there's pressure on the midtown garages from what's happening there that's not being felt in the city center.

And every you know, every garage is such that you can probably park in a garage and go south or north, so it's not perfect.

So for now, things are moving, but if there's an opportunity to add a couple hundred spaces to a garage that's about to be built anyways, that's what's going to prepare us for the future.

Would you say that differently?

Yeah, I was trying to remember Mr.

Green, do you have another question?

No, but along the lines, all right.

Um when the they have this at the um parking garage at the Tarkington.

You know, how many spaces are available?

You see it at the airport when you drive.

All right, is there anything kind of collectively, you know, where someone's coming into Carmel and they can look and say, okay, uh to your point, I can't get to the Tarkington, but you know, midtown's got some spots.

Is there anything collectively we have like that?

Not currently, but that's part of the recommendation is to wire those in.

Um another strategy is too is how you display those.

You don't have to tell everybody about all your garages at the same time if you want to change the behavior that they you want to drive them to this garage.

Okay.

Yeah, that's certainly a goal.

Um so there's a bunch of there's some information that report about retrofitting all the existing garages.

So since we only have two with that information, the dashboard or app right now, you know, is only useful for those two garages, so it's been a super high priority, but as we get more garages with that information, or if we find the opportunity to retrofit, then that's another key aspect to uh wayfinding is if people are using their phone or their very fancy cars that they drive, tell them where to go.

That that was my that was my initial question to you, Henry, which I think maybe I didn't ask it properly, but is there a way of working with these private?

That was my question.

Yeah, so as Henry said there's different expensive different garages depending on how they were built, how the agreements in them are that complicates measuring which spaces are used or not used.

There is a way to do all of them, but there's just a cost that goes with that.

Well, and then yeah, I just thought that there was some cost recovery and some of some of this documentation.

Um by the way, it was a great great job.

Just want to say that.

Sorry I didn't tell you that in the onset.

Um the other question too is going back to the signage where you're talking about to Councillor Green's part um point.

You're talking about specifically where these garages are full, and there's no way of pushing people to other parking garages because I know when I go out to eat, I want to park the closest place I possibly can.

But I realize that sometimes I can't.

So there's no there's nothing that we have at this point that pushes people into that into those other parking lots, which was another point that I was trying to make in the very beginning, which I clearly didn't make.

No, no, you you're right, and James makes this makes this point too.

If there's not a sign outside that says how many spaces everyone's gonna drive in the garage until they leave back out.

So CRC started with council gave CRC money to build a civic square garage.

That was the first one we put counters in.

Then it was time to retrof it to the lights in the targeting garage were old, and it was time to replace them.

So it made sense as we re streets was replacing the lights to put in the parking counting infrastructure.

Every garage though is different, so the costs are different, and it doesn't help that generally we do projects where 25% of the spaces are reserved.

And so, like in the rail yard garage, that's the one in in the rail yard project in Midtown, all the reserve spaces there are at the very top floor.

So it's kind of easy to say, did you go into the garage?

We scan once, did you go into the reserve spot, then we scan you once again.

Now we really know how many spaces are open for everyone.

It's really easy in that garage.

There are also other garages like Veterans Way where the reserves are scattered all throughout.

And you kind of have to look at each spot to really know.

And so the costs do really change depending on the garage.

Also, if your garage just got built, you're probably not doing that.

Versus if you're like two years away from replacing all your lights, it probably makes sense to look at that kind of retrofit.

So it all kind of varies.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Um so I'm looking here at the pattern across the system, but I wanted to see if we dive into it seems it's a nominally to mean I maybe you can help me understand it is the veterans' way garage.

Do you have the inflow and outflow chart for that one?

It it is an anomaly because at the time that the fees were being taken, the Ren and the Windsor had not yet filled that garage.

And that's this is noted in the report several times.

So our counts of veterans excludes the two largest buildings being built there.

So it was a little undercounted, and the report notes that.

Well, I mean, it has a peak peak parking at 9 a.m.

Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, a lot of those businesses are also morning businesses and the residents.

Yeah.

But that's why I'd like to see the inflow house there.

Was any of that construction?

Driver construction workers.

It's quite possible it was, yes.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I have just one thing I wanted to pop in on, if you don't mind.

Um first of all, I appreciate the detail in this.

I really think ultimately um it has to be a marriage of technology that's gonna solve this problem because yes, staffing and forcement is important, but how do we create that kind of um ability for the enforcement to even exist?

I love the iteration out here on the LPR enforcement, you know, and phases that you've put into this study, also the valley licensing program fees and the suggestions on the cost recovery on those fees.

I think the details in this study are are really helpful.

Um, looking at the financial stability and trying to figure out how we do that and sustainability of a model like this.

So I think that's the next step for us to take now is to digest this data and get recommendations from you, get recommendations driven by the data in the study, and then try to come up with some solutions that are both um enforceable and workable.

Um I I think it's in, I mean, the the beauty is that a lot of it is in here.

Um, and I think having that time to really digest this is gonna be helpful.

Um I also think that um the street parking that's been referenced multiple times by multiple multiple of my fellow counselors is you know still not addressed as well throughout this study.

Um and I I still think we have issues that we need to discuss.

That's the residential permit parking.

Yeah, so I think again the technology or the implementation of enforcement is gonna help us with that.

So we have sort of an archaic way that we do the residential uh you know parking placards and different things.

Um we tried it a couple different times with different signage and different methods um to some varying levels of success.

But I think the on-street parking and on Main Street has this new technology uh that's more enforceable, that carries over into that residential parking system potentially.

Okay.

Oh, good.

One final comment.

Um, and that relates to the ages of the garage and ongoing maintenance.

Uh this summer we saw Midtown North get repaired and all that displacement.

A lot of the other garages are reaching that point, and that's going to become an ongoing challenge, and that also uh relates to the suggestion for incremental capacity.

Umce we're talking about on street parking, and we are uh sounds to me like one of our goals is to re-educate the public, change behavior.

We have I don't know if we have hundreds, but we have dozens of signs around in our core that say no parking.

They're beautiful signs.

They have black, uh I mean they are just the most beautiful sign I've ever seen.

But uh they say no parking Monday through Friday, 8 30 a.m.

to 9 30 a.m.

while Carmel Clay schools are in session, except vehicles with residential stickers, and then there's a beautiful picture of a tow truck with a car on the hook.

Now I remember that these signs are back from the early 2000s, maybe even earlier than that, and it was all about Carmel High School.

Um and the parking around, well, that issue got worse, and we've changed and modified.

School didn't even start till nine something now.

So these are irrelevant.

I've I've walked by them, I've kept my mouth shut, but I think we need to get them down.

Are you sure there's hundreds of them?

Uh I mean, maybe thousands, maybe thousands of them.

I feel like they're everywhere.

They should have all been removed if they're uh if we don't have that ordinance anymore.

Oh no, no.

When we changed it, I'll have to see which one you're referencing.

But when we changed it most recently for the school parking and added new signs, they did go track all the old signs.

Now there's a lot, there were thousands probably to start, and maybe we're down to a handful.

Also, if you see, then let me know.

Uh well we've missed them.

But as I recall, we did a we did zones around the high school with the new ordinance.

These signs are over on the west side.

That's probably why they didn't get removed.

So probably are no longer valid, but if they weren't in the zone when they were putting the new one up, yeah.

So literally, I know First Avenue Northwest on the west side of range line has them all up and down there.

Uh, but but I've got a picture of a of a different neighborhood.

So anyway, I okay.

I didn't know you, I didn't know they were supposed to come down, so I'd like to do that.

I'll double check, but I there if there are the signs that I'm if we're all talking about the same sign, I've seen some over the the last year or so, and I'll just let the street department know they've taken down.

And then just for two more minutes, um, so did you speak about um we've always had kind of a theory that we can keep residential street speeds down by let allowing parking on both sides of the street.

However, what I am seeing in some of our core areas is by doing that, we're getting the businesses and um it's not really just residents, but we get the overflow of the businesses who might even walk a block, like up onto rangeline, but are parking on some of the in the side neighborhoods.

What's our theory on that?

Um so I know like even up First Avenue from Sophia, there's overflow there, there's overflow on the east-west streets.

What's our theory about speed and allowing or not allowing parking on our residential streets where literally they're bumper to bumper, and you can't really see around that kind of thing.

Yeah, so I mean that's just a general principle.

Um narrow road will uh induce a lower speed, uh cars parked on the side of the road will induce a lower speed.

Obviously, there's a balance of a number of factors that's gonna go into the decision on both sides of the road, on one side of the road, what the business impact or what the the issues are that you might have out there that kind of help us to inform you on on what we should do for the parking emergency access as well.

So we sort of have a rubric for street widths on step one.

Does it qualify for on one side of the road or both sides?

And that's based around emergency vehicle access.

Um but then you go from there to there's these issues with businesses or whatever, and you might restrict parking further.

So is that part of it?

Is that factored into this?

That's not something that was within the scope of the study, no.

Bragg, could you um could you arti so we sort of take a hodgepodge approach to residential parking in the central core?

We get a complaint, we talk to them, appears to be an issue, you review it, we put in residential parking or we put in some some type of mechanism, and then unfortunately some it we don't have a lot of enforcement activity.

What is what is the next steps in process to look at our central core?

And I know Theresa's been very interested in this to um evaluate our resident our street parking.

And and so obviously with the hopes that we're gonna increase enforcement to change behaviors.

But what's the process to get to some solutions in these central core neighborhoods that are dealing with this issue versus we get a complaint and then we come to you and get an ordinance done.

Um we could try to take those complaints and think more generally or holistically about them.

Um but you can imagine a lot of the complaints or issues are in an engineer's mind just one of the factors in what we would recommend.

Uh a lot of people, the roads are, especially the roads from the 70s and 80s, are what they are, uh, and in my opinion, poorly designed because of the feedback from the neighbors that wanted to have a 30-foot wide road, you know, because they want their UPS truck to get in and all these other things.

Well, there's a consequence to that that you don't see right away um higher speeds in more dangerous areas.

So you can't have everything, so it's a balance.

But if we kind of look at those uh not as one off, so I don't think we do, we kind of get the complaints and we kind of try to look at them more holistically to give a more holistic answer versus just like this person wants no parking in this spot, so we don't do it.

But there's not an approach just to evaluate our whole the residential, the core residential neighborhoods determine where we want to take action and and not, yeah.

And again, we had that rubric for here's the width of your street, and that's where we started on one side or on both sides.

Um immediately the complaints we'll get if we allow parking on both sides and we have the the required width for the fire truck to get down, it's not necessarily the required width for if the two car park to go, but that's intentional.

But there's a lot of areas we already allow street parking that there's no enforcement at all in, there's no time limits, there's no enforcement at all.

I'm talking about more of that type of approach, just not whether or not parking is allowed on both sides of streets.

I mean, where there is existing parking, should we put time limits in there?

Should we look at residential pro uh programs?

Um obviously with uh so our office probably hasn't initiated that because we were aware of the lacks enforcement, and so it wouldn't be a solution that's viable in my opinion if you're not gonna enforce.

So we wouldn't have started anything like that.

But you know, what we talked what we looked at earlier, it's an easy registration process for the residential components.

They literally can go online, submit their license plate number, submit their their guest license plate number, and then it's automatically incorporated into the enforcement mechanism.

Yeah, now if we move forward with this new system and it is enforceable, I would find it a viable tool in our tool chest to use.

So I just don't think it was before, so our office wouldn't initiate it at a whole scale or a large, you know, look at this quadrant.

Now that that's a tool, we may come with some recommendations or do a study that would show how to implement that to solve some of the issues in some of the different neighborhoods.

Which kind of piggybacking off of what counselor Taylor said, Second Avenue Southwest, I think has had some issues with people parking directly in front of their driveways.

Um I know there were some issues in requests about making that a one-way street or a one-side parking street, but I guess it makes sense, as you guys were saying, to it slows traffic down.

So there have been some concerns and some complaints on that street about about people and parking really.

Yeah, we can we change some of the striping um to help not have people park behind the driveways.

I think enforcement-wise, I mean that's already in state code, you don't need an LPR or some fancy technology, but it's hard to like catch that person, I think.

Uh, but I met out there with Council Warrell to talk about kind of who the biggest perpetrators were, and it was delivery trucks, and so we did change to allow more delivery type parking.

Um so there's different kind of changes like that that we would make.

I have one more question.

It may not be specific to parking, but um outside of the parking garage where savor is there's a it's a one-way going out, and there's a three-way stop.

Brad, I know you're gonna be so mad at me for bringing that up.

Uh no, there's a constituent that uh also pointed that out to us.

Um I'll have to go back to my email to see what I told them or suggested we were gonna do.

Uh but we might make a change to that.

Okay, thank you.

So I again it seems silly.

Um, and I need to go back and look at it, but we do want to avoid any opportunity, even if I think you'd have to go the wrong way to see the stop sign, but because we have enough people going the wrong way.

I agree with you.

There are plenty of people that do go the wrong way out that parking outside of that parking garage then.

So basically it's a legal way to help people who are doing things illegal still be safe, but yeah, okay.

Um we're gonna wrap this up here in a minute.

Uh a couple questions.

One one to Teresa's point.

When we see this in in garages a lot where it restricts the size of the vehicle.

It really is a nuisance having a giant delivery truck and then an F 350 or something else, like you can't get through.

I mean, just it doesn't work, and you can do all the measuring you want all day long, but people don't park on the curve.

Um so is there are there scenarios where across from delivery zones it's compact vehicle only or non just a thought, something to consider.

Um and then uh you know, okay, especially as the council starts kind of exploring what the mission of our accessibility committee is, our ADA, and uh how are we addressing that?

Because federal ADA is one in eight spots, excuse me, one in six spots of handicapped spots have to be van accessible, which is two spots.

State code is one in eight, but our UDO says we shall enforce the more restrictive of the two.

And then there is the one of ADA compliance is shortest distance to the entrance of a building.

And this is a lot of theory that I don't understand, like of entrance to what building or what business, and how are we assessing where on the street or where in a garage uh in a garage close to the elevator, I would expect, but on the onset of the street.

So there's different rules uh for um public streets versus the site.

So what your quoting is mostly for a site development if I have a parking lot or a garage.

I might apply differently on a public street.

Because again, if I have a public street that's however long and there's 12 businesses, where do those handicapped parking spaces?

Accessible parking spaces go.

So I don't particularly care what I'm what area.

I just want to make sure we're looking at.

Yes, 100%.

Um the garages the architects have to certify ADA before it can get built.

Yeah, but it's ADA based on number of spots, and you play with the number of spots, so I just want to make sure we're going above and beyond what's required for our understood.

Yep.

I didn't mean that in a negative way.

I'm saying like it.

Anybody?

Uh this comedian committee of the whole over the Carmel downtown parking studies adjourned.