A bill that won tentative approval from the City Council Budget Committee on Wednesday would allow a group of neighbors to petition for a restricted parking zone.
Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga, who introduced Bill 70, said she’s hoping the measure will ease congestion in residential areas where street parking is a problem, especially those near “traffic generators,” such as universities and hospitals.
A pilot program last year that established a restricted parking zone covering two areas of Kalihi proved wildly successful and consequently became a permanent RPZ.
City Transportation Services Director Wes Frysztacki said a survey showed 98 percent of households in the two zones support the program.
“A lot of this is not just about parking, it’s about giving people their community back, knowing what cars park in front of their house,” he said. “So it’s not just about trying to accommodate the demands of vehicles but also the nature of bringing back the communities to what they were before.”
Kalihi residents who petitioned for their RPZ said that besides vehicles believed to be spillover from a large housing project nearby, they were witnessing what appeared to be drug activity and people sleeping in their cars.
Frysztacki supports the measure but asked that resources to be set aside for its administration. “The problem is it does take a lot of staff to administer the program,” he said.
DTS has received requests for RPZs in other neighborhoods, he said.
“We think that ultimately there may be as many as 15 zones islandwide,” he said. “They are very beneficial.”
Similar programs exist on the mainland, Frysztacki said. The RPZ program administered by the Seattle Department of Transportation oversees 34 zones involving more than 50,000 households, 19,000 of which are participating. “This is a very mature program that’s been around for decades,” he said. The department there has more than 100 employees involved with its overall parking program, four full-time staffers dedicated to issuing and controlling permits, he said.
In Portland, Ore., 138 employees are dedicated to the city’s successful restricted parking program.
Frysztacki said DTS currently has a staff of 89 people. “We have good people, we just need more.”
He suggested that the program pay for itself by charging fees.
The current draft of the bill requires an RPZ petition include at least four contiguous blocks in a residential or apartment zone. If approved, only those living in the district would be eligible to obtain permits allowing them to park there during specific times, or 24 hours a day, depending on what’s requested in a petition. Each eligible dwelling unit would be entitled to no more than four permits. Visitor permits also would be allowed.
A majority of the residents within the proposed zone would need to sign the petition, which would be submitted to DTS.
If the DTS director agrees to endorse the RPZ, a resolution would be sent to the Council, which would make the final decision on each request.
Before forwarding such a resolution, the DTS director would need to “engage affected and interested community stakeholders through a public information and involvement program” that would include outreach and information gathering.
Among the criteria the DTS director would need to consider is “whether 75 percent or more of the capacity of the streets in the proposed RPZ is generally occupied, and more than 35 percent of the vehicles parked on the street in the proposed RPZ are not owned by residents of the designated area.” The director also would need to conclude there is “an identifiable traffic generator” in the proposed zone, such as a hospital or university campus.
No members of the public testified at Wednesday’s meeting.
