A committee will meet on or around April 1 to strategize how to implement a plan designed to increase the number of parking spots in downtown Baton Rouge, the head of the Downtown Development District said this morning.
The committee may include the Downtown Development District’s commissioners and people who own parking lots and parking structures downtown, DDD Executive Director Davis Rhorer said.
The committee will begin executing the parking plan, which was crafted by Portland, Oregon-based Fregonese Associates based on the results of a 2014 parking analysis done by engineering company AECOM.
The plan calls for replacing antiquated parking meters with smart meters as well as hiring a professional firm to manage the city’s downtown parking garages. Smart meters allow drivers to find open spots using their smartphone and to use a credit card to pay at a parking meter.
The plan also calls for expanding the east River Center Garage to increase the number of parking spots from 800 to 1,200.
Rhorer said there are currently 1,562 total parking spots downtown, about 822 of which are metered and 463 are unmetered. There are also 277 loading zones. Potential scenarios for improving parking include adding meters to 143 unmetered spots and reducing the number of loading zones.
“They don’t even make the parts for the meters they have out on the streets, they are so old,” Rhorer said.
The city-parish could collect just under $1 million annually from strategically placed smart meters operating 45 hours a week at 75 cents per hour, according to numbers from Fregonese Associates.
Most of those smart meters, 484, would go in high-utilization zones, meaning they are used about 75% of the 45 weekly hours.
John Fregonese, of Fregonese Associates, told Daily Report in January that smart meters can be expensive, but the city-parish could buy them at a wholesale price by adding its order to an existing bulk order placed by a larger city.
“I think this is really taking an existing resource that you have—making it more efficient, making it a lot easier for the public to find and use the parking,” Fregonese told the Metro Council on Jan. 13.
—Ryan Broussard
