Consider Requiring Paid Parking at Any Future City Owned or Operated Parking Lots, Including the Main Street Ferry Terminal.  (Councilmember Vella)
Nine is consider requiring paid parking at any future city owned or operated parking lots, including the Main Street Ferry Terminal. This item was placed on the agenda at the request of Councilmember Vela, and we have three speakers. Okay. So, Councilmember Ballard, the floor is yours. I'll keep it short. But basically this item has come up a number of times whenever we've discussed our Climate Action Plan and various projects that have been brought before the Council. And I thought that it would be helpful to have this conversation agenda so that we can really discuss it in full. Because I know that there are a number of items coming back to the council are scheduled to come back to us and as we all know, free, there's nothing that's really free. It just means that it's subsidized from somebody. And and in in this case, subsidizing parking means that we're spending public funds on parking, which is not necessarily in line with our stated goals under our Climate Action Plan or in line with our other goals in terms of finding ways to provide more housing and things like that. So I just want us to have this conversation so that we can give staff some direction ahead of these items coming back. And I certainly I didn't I specifically didn't put a dollar amount or anything like that because obviously it depends on the project and how we go about and, you know, enforcing it. But I think if we can at least have the general conversation and perhaps give staff some general direction to put this into effect, then any time an item comes up where there would be a city lot or city parking, we know to to include this analysis in the staff report so that we can vote on it. And it just becomes part of the conversation as opposed to something that we add on later on. So I hope you'll be supportive. Okay. And so I. I think I'm. So what's your ask? My ask is that we direct staff essentially to come back to us with either what basically to give directive to staff that for any projects including city parking city. Any any parking lots or other parking structures that they provide us with options for how to actually do that had actually charge for parking and that that be part of the the cost analysis that that gets built in. Okay. For new projects. Mm hmm. Okay. And we have new public speakers on this. Are we do we have three? Okay. Any current questions from council before we take our public speakers? Calcium or maybe not from the author, but from staff. So the parking lot at Seaplane Lagoon Ferry, I mean, is that something that has already been. We've done that. It's already there. Okay. So. Okay. Anything further? Let's hear those patient public speakers Denise Trapani. Debbie Ryan and Ruth Harvey. Who they are. Good evening. It's still evening. Thank you. Hi. Hi, Madam Mayor and council members, thank you for the opportunity to speak here tonight and especially thank you, former Vice Mayor Vella, for bringing this subject up. I also want to start by thanking staff, especially the transportation and planning staff and the public work staff for the work they've done to encourage aluminum and to choose alternative transportation options. We heard from the public works director that said the Cross Alameda Trail, a big section of it is opening in a couple of days. It was actually open today and I got to ride it tonight. And it's amazing. It's stunning. But even with all that encouragement that our staff is doing for people to choose, alternative transportation's drivers are continuing to kill and injure people on our streets, and our greenhouse gas emissions from personal transportation continue to rise. It's clear that encouraging people to get out of their cars isn't enough. I'm here to ask you to please go beyond encouraging people to do the right thing by also actively discouraging driving. You can do that by no longer paying the cost of people to park in our public lots at the ferry and in other places. If this comes up and we have a public conversation about it, you're going to hear from people who say that you can't charge for parking at the ferry until you provide another transit option. But that's simply not true. That's no different than people saying you can't approve any more housing construction until you solve all our traffic issues. The issues are unrelated and drivers will just keep moving the goalposts. If you were able to magically get Alameda or Alameda County Transit to provide bus service to the terminal, people would still need to pay an extra 450 daily for their roundtrip bus drop bus ride. I don't know why we would think that the they need the option to pay for a bus ride before we start giving away parking. We've run bus service out to Main Street terminal before while there was free parking. People didn't stop driving then and they won't do it now. Not unless the option is at least financial parity, which means we have to charge for parking. And I'd also ask you to maybe consider something a little more radical, which is potentially absolving yourselves from the responsibility to provide free parking. It's it's not our responsibility. It's not a free parking. It's not a right. It's a luxury that we've decided to give to those who are lucky enough to afford a car and choose to drive. There is no free parking, so I think my time is almost up that I'll just close with that. So thank you for raising this issue. Thank you. Debbie Ryan and Ruth Abby Ben Smith. Good. Very late evening, Tom. Yeah. Good evening. Try to keep it short. Hopefully you received a letter earlier today from Qatar. Can the action for sustain. Mm. But my name is Debbie Ryan with Qatar. And the gist of the letter is that we are in support of furthering this conversation and considering the requirement of paying for parking as stated in the referral. Mainly because we do want to completely connect this to the transportation plan, the transportation choice plan that was committed to start a year and a half ago. The Climate Emergency Mobilization Resolution that was committed to in March of last year, as well as the Climate Action Resiliency Plan that was committed to in September. We very much feel that these are directly related. And if you look at the current plan, which details on page 21 to 22 and as of January 2020, about 70% of Almeida's annual GHG emissions will come from transportation. And in order to reach the city's newly set sustainability goals, Alameda must achieve deep cuts in transportation emissions. This is directly affiliated with that. And if you look at the letter, it does detail. I don't have to go through all the bullets, but all the different ways that we really can reduce GHG, we can increase carpooling, we can look at increasing biking to the ferry and the cross Alameda Trail and ridership on AC Transit Line 96. So all of these can be implementable and increased upon. Now, we do also look at the idea, I think, what the last speaker just said, which is that in conjunction we have to look at this by continuing the momentum, the forward innovation of affordable transportation options. Because speaking to many folks, including at a community event this evening, people want to ride their bikes, they want to lock them up. They want to ride their scooters. They want to see new lines and new pools developed. We have to keep working on that together, but we have to avoid the use of the single occupancy vehicles. Real quickly, I just wanted to also read a quick note. This is not here locally, but just a congratulations article to the towns of Banff and Canmore. Yet another city who's increased their use of paid parking in order to look at the reduction of GHG emissions. And I think there's a really good point here in that it says these proposals do not represent yet another fee, but rather paid parking redistributes a silent charge on all taxpayers to an explicit charge for those who use public parking lots. And I think that's really important for us to consider, because these parking spaces are worth something and the city should use perhaps the funds coming out of it to work in other ways to get people out of their cars. So thank you. We're in full support. Thank you for all your good work with Ryan Mosby. Good evening, Madam Mayor. Members of the City Council. My name is Ruth Abby with Community Action for Sustainable Alameda. And we support the the request to put this discussion on a future agenda. You're not going to be discussing the merits of the proposal tonight. But I think one of the things you might ask staff to do when you do is to look at a blanket policy rather than coming up for each new development to provide options for paid parking. Just, you know, develop a city council policy that you will always have paid parking for public spaces, and that would be our recommendation. Then you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to litigate it every time and have public comment and concerns about it. It would just be the policy of the city. Thank you very much. Thank you. And Mr. Smith. And good evening, Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor and council members. And thank you, Councilmember Melo, for bringing this up. I've been a member of the Sierra Club for a long time and I remember bringing up housing for a long time. All of these organizations have been saying, we, we need to do something to have people pay for parking. It's another example of inequality by subsidizing the car, not paying the full prices. And we make people pay for a bus ticket, which is environmentally better. It's also the people that take the busses generally have less money to begin with. So it's just backwards, bad public policy. So I realize that it's it's difficult to do politically, but this is where the education begins and great deal with climate change deals, inequality. We've got to begin educating people and there's no way to begin that education and with the pocketbook, but no better way to do that. So thank you. I really do support having this come up for discussion. Okay. So council your thoughts. I'll jump in. Again. Yeah. So just to finish my other point. So when the ferry station parking opens, is that going to be paid? Seaplane Lagoon. Seaplane Lagoon. Yeah. Yes. That's the intent. We are actually bringing back. And so we can take your comments tonight and we're bringing back a parking. Staff. Report, I believe, in March. So we can at this point, this is great timing. So we can take your comments from tonight and put it into that staff report. Okay. So I'll be really quick because it's getting late. I fully support this. I think we need to go even beyond what this this does. San Francisco, you know, different neighborhoods have different stickers where you're allowed to park in certain times. Where I grew up, we used to every car had a village sticker and it was kind of cool to see the different art on them. But the point is, if you didn't have a sticker, you got a ticket and you also generated some revenue. So if there was something we could do to kind of charge for parking, kind of in a way, you know, like you got to have a permit to park on a city street. I don't know what that solution looks like, but other cities have done it because I think, as the speaker said, you know, there's just way too many cars here and the cost of driving nice to drive to San Francisco. It would be $7 to park and $6 for roundtrip. I mean, that was $13. That's not a lot of money to go to San Francisco. But, you know, if it was 25, I'd never go because it was 40 bucks to park downtown. But, you know, if if the cost of parking is comparable or is prices you out, then, you know, you'll have to take a bus. And then last thing, this chicken and the egg thing about the funding, I think if we start charging for parking and we can amass enough money, we can help subsidize bus because I think that's what we did with the line 19. We paid for it as a city the first couple of years and then we paid more. But once it generated more revenue and then I and I also think we're having site A I think we're getting bus service on day one, too. So I mean, those kind of arguments don't really hold a lot of water with me. I will just chime in and remind us that what we already know is that we can charge for parking, we can have regulations, but it requires enforcement. And I do know I have it on good authority that in the next month or so that item is coming to us. So, you know, we want to manage expectations. It's never enough to just say, yeah, we're going to pay for parking, but there has to be a way to deal with it. And then yeah, just a reminder. Councilmember Desai One thing that I would encourage when we talk about single occupancy vehicles is this the people who drive to work are not bad people, they're not evil people. They are fellow residents, they are neighbors. They love this city just as much as anyone. And if the trend is any indication, at some point we're going to get out, get away from. You know, gas powered cars that everything will be electric. So I would encourage the residents to avoid rhetoric that paints single occupancy vehicles as bad people. And I'm very concerned that that's the trajectory that we can be going. They get up early in the morning, travel long distances like San Jose or Fremont, you know, to make a living for their families just like everyone else. And by the same token, you know, it doesn't mean that, you know, people who ride bicycles are, you know, all the virtuous people. Let's not create caricatures of different people who utilize different modes of transit. Let's just have a policy discussion on its merits. Thanks. Hi. Well, I appreciate. I think. I think that's a that's a point well taken. Um, let's see. Just going down the line. Oh, well, the maker of the motion and I. Want to clarify one thing, because I this is a I had two drafts of this and I realize this is after it got published this it. This is this wasn't the original one. And that there was this not the one that I intended to use. And it says that new including the new terminal at Main Street. And that was a typo. And it's. The seaplane lagoon, but also any any new parking or changes to the parking at Main Street. Because one of the things that has come up in the past that we've discussed is perhaps repaving or expenditures out there. And I want that to be considered as new parking if we're going to be expending any sort of major funds to improve existing lots. Right. Basement X way. Sure. So obviously. Well, hopefully. Obviously, a topic near and dear to my heart. I guess I'm struggling a little bit with what we're actually asking because we already have policies that every public every public parking project that is underway or exists is priced except for our two ferry terminals and Main Street ferry terminal is likely going to fade into fade in its use significantly. It's very unlikely that anybody will be using it at once once the new the new terminal goes in. And I would want to be careful that we're not spent encouraging encouraging the spending of money on unpaid parking infrastructure. It's a place that people might not be using, although I think if it's going to be revamped because it's getting used, I think I think it's a it's a good idea. My understanding is that we have a parking policy for street parking, etc., that is somewhat under development. We've tried so many different things that the transportation folks I have no idea where that is and I don't have an expectation it will be to us in the next month. But. But. I guess I'm not I'm not I'm not exactly sure what direction we're giving to staff. I don't know that there is. With all the different transportation projects, whether or not something asking for somebody to come back very, very soon on this issue I don't think is going to have a huge impact. And I'm wondering if we can kind of give more direction that when issues related to city owned lights and etc. come , you know, rather than a discussion in the future, why don't we just can we just give it the the direction tonight that there always be a paid parking option? That's what I'm asking. Okay. So I heard bring it back for discussion in the future. Not tonight. So that sounded like a whole new parking item. So it's just this. Just give direction. Yeah. Okay. I do want to say one thing. The residential parking permits do not pay for themselves or barely pay for themselves. They are something like $27 a year and the state law does not allow for anything more. So all they end up doing is privatizing the street for the people who live in a specific area, but they aren't a really good management process for managing overall use. So I think we're not correcting you. There are places where they exist. We have actually given it away for free out at Harper Bay near the ferry out there. I think that's something we should maybe reconsider someday. But we're nobody parks in the street, but nobody has to pay for permits. So nobody parks anyway. But yeah, I can see if that if that's if that's the intent. I'm 100% on board. And I would just say I actually think that people will continue to use the Main Street Ferry terminal. It'll just be more trips that are going to Oakland, and that's yet another way we get single occupancy vehicles off the road. But I also think that it is a matter of prioritizing both staff time and funding. And I think that Seaplane Lagoon should be were our biggest pressures because I think that, you know, this is the new ferry terminal and you're starting from scratch from the ground up. You can do it. Right. But I think it's those are good recommendations. I just think that we also need to tell staff it's not something that you push everything else off the desk and work on this. But I think, you know, it's it is something I think. We. Do need to do whatever we can to incentivize people out of their single occupancy vehicles. But I, I hear what Councilmember de SAG is saying. I think I always like to look for as many carrots as sticks. I mean, my carrot is I'm not sitting in my vehicle surrounded by traffic, but it's probably telling people they're horrible people or implying that that's not your most effective strategy. But we're rather going to strive to do better. And even if you drive in TV, we don't need more cars on the road because the roads are pretty crowded and that will keep working. So so this is essentially a recommendation to staff and do we need anything further? Okay. So then thank you for bringing that to our attention, Councilmember Vella. And then with that, we've got Council Communications Councilmember Vella, anything from you?