Updated Parking Study Shows Ample Availability for Lansdale Borough

Dan Sokil | The Reporter•

Newly paved parking spaces can be seen in the parking lot adjacent to the Lansdale freight station off of Broad Street in August 2023.

Over a decade since the last time, Lansdale now has an updated study looking at parking throughout the town.

That study has now been updated, council heard earlier this month, and the message is clear.

"The good thing is, there’s still plenty of parking in Lansdale,” said parking authority chairman Dan Dunigan. "It might not be right in front of the exact place you’d like to be, at the exact time that you’d like to be there. But we’re in good shape overall.”

In 2010 into 2011, council and the parking authority commissioned parking consultants Nelson Nygaard to evaluate all parking in the town, and present possible solutions for using the current parking more efficiently while creating more. The firm presented their findings in November 2011, showing that the borough had just shy of 4,000 parking spaces in the downtown and Pennbrook Parkway areas, with roughly half used during peak hours.

Since then, several recommendations spelled out in the 2011 study have been implemented by council and the parking authority, including changes in parking prices to encourage turnover in the downtown area, the purchase of electronic kiosks to replace meters in three downtown lots, installation of wayfinding signs around town to point drivers toward lots, and the adoption of ParkMobile, an app-based mobile payment system for parking.

Other major projects that have been finished since the study was started include the construction by SEPTA of a 660-space parking garage behind the Lansdale train station, opening of a new SEPTA station with parking for rail commuters at Ninth Street, the construction starting in 2017 of apartments atop the Madison Parking Lot, and a new "Lansdale Luxor” apartment building, and freshly paved borough parking lot, now open just east of Broad Street and south of the town’s freight station.

Sine the parking study update was announced in early 2019, Dunigan told council on Oct. 18, the borough’s traffic engineers Pennoni and Associates have re-counted and recalculated

"They went through all the relevant ordinances, the old parking study, they looked at all the improvements, and are going to give you an overview of where we are, what we’ve discovered,” Dunigan said.

Pennoni engineer Mark Bickerton told council that the same downtown study area was observed starting in September 2021, once pandemic-related closures had started to lift, and focused on parking along West Main Street and about one block each north and south. Parking consultant Todd Helmer summarized the findings of the 50-plus-page study, saying the town’s total is approximately 4,600 parking spots in the study area, counting both public and private lots.

"If you break that down to public spaces, that are open to the public, it’s just over 1,900. So of the total, that’s about what it represents for public use,” Helmer said.

The parking consultant observed that area on a Wednesday, every two hours, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. to determine occupancy rates, and found that a maximum of about 41 percent of those 1,900 spaces were full during the peak hours between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.

"You have about 850 spaces in surplus, that are open to the public, which is essentially on-street as well as the off-street public lots,” Helmer said.

The study discusses parking rates, and how to modify the town’s existing parking rate structure to encourage more turnover in busier downtown spaces. The town’s current parking rates of 50 cents per six hours could be increased marginally as one way to decrease long-term parking, he said.

"You want to try to encourage that as much as possible: encourage turnover, and minimize long-term parking in areas where you want to promote walkability, and customers – merchants, retail, restaurants, those types of things,” Helmer said.

The town’s current "free lunch” program, that offers free parking in certain Main Street spots from noon to 2 p.m. to encourage visitors to try downtown restaurants, may also warrant a second look, he said.

"It goes back to trying to promote a little more turnover on Main Street, than in other remote parking locations in other lots,” Helmer said.

The study also discusses ways the borough could implement a fee-in-lieu-of for developers that want to use or modify downtown buildings within the borough’s downtown business overlay district, but can’t meet current parking requirements.

"Based on the value of the land, and the location, then they would be required to pay X thousands of dollars,” Helmer said, which could be used toward other parking improvements elsewhere in the town.

The study also recommends better communication to residents about the parking that already exists, such as the SEPTA garage and the new freight station lots, Bickerton told council, and the study data did include the 600-plus spaces in the SEPTA garage. Councilwoman Mary Fuller asked how the town could better promote the garage, and Bickerton said that’s an ongoing topic.

"What can we do to help people find those spaces? I’ve been in there several times, and there’s so much space in there, and it must make you guys cringe as much as me when I hear people say ‘there’s no parking,’ and a free — did you hear me say free? — 600-some spaces are right there,” Fuller said.

Councilman BJ Breish asked if the study addresses new technology such as meters that could modify rates based on the parking demand and peak hours in a certain area. Helmer said that "dynamic rate structuring” technology does exist, usually at airports, downtowns or at in large events, but may or may not work for Lansdale.

"There is that technology out there that would identify frequency of use, peak times, it would adjust the rates at those particular times up or down. I’m not sure how viable it would be right now for the borough – that’s something we could certainly explore further,” Helmer said. Mayor Garry Herbert added that doing so needs information: "That requires a data stream that we probably do not have right now,” and suggested the data be uploaded into the town’s existing map-based GIS information systems for developers and potential new businesses to analyze.

Council President Denton Burnell asked if the study recommended new wayfinding signage to help visitors and residents find parking that exists now: "There’s plenty of parking, as we’ve indicated, but people don’t know how to find it.”

Dunigan answered that the parking authority recently finished a round of adding wayfinding signs around the town, and the authority has started to talk about a third round, despite delays over the past three years: "I hate to keep saying ‘Covid and supply chain,’ but it’s true.”

Another question the authority is discussing, he added: has the "free lunch” downtown parking outlived its usefulness, in a post-pandemic era and while the town is paying a parking attendant to monitor spaces that are free?

"For those two hours, we pay a parking attendant to do nothing. So it’s an absolute loser for the parking authority, and the borough. That’s one of the main reasons to make the recommendation that it goes away,” Dunigan said.

And as for variable pricing, Dunigan said that’s a tactic he would like to see over time, comparing it to "surge pricing” used by ride-sharing apps, but doing so would require hardware and software updates that are not in the authority’s short-term plans.

"We’re nowhere near that. There’s not the money to do it. It’s a great idea, and we’ll move with technology in every way we reasonably can,” he said. "Our goal is to continuously improve the situation.”

Fuller asked if the authority had considered adding variable message signs anywhere in downtown that indicate how many spaces are open, particularly in the SPETA garage where hundreds of spots could be empty at any time, and Dunigan said that’s also a long-term item.

"You roll into a parking garage, and it tells you ‘there’s 378 spaces ,’ or ‘There’s none here, but there’s 200 down the street,’ that’ll all be part of it. But now it’s just getting sufficient signage to get somebody to a lot that isn’t necessarily right in front of the business, but is available,” he said.

"To me, 41 percent (occupancy) – to me, that’s 59 percent open, so there’s plenty of spots,” Dunigan said.

And does higher demand for parking downtown also mean that there are more destinations to visit?

"There was not enough economic activity in the borough, for years and years. People got used to parking a block or two away, and dropping a nickel or dime in the Madison Parking lot. That was 1978, or 1984. It’s 2023 – that’s not how the world works,” Dunigan said.

"If your neighbor gripes about the fact that they can’t find a place to park, direct them to (the study). Say ‘Look at what it really is.’ We’ve hired professionals, we’ve done the study, we’ve incurred the costs, and the results have been the same,” he said.

Councilman Mark Ladley said as chairman of the town’s economic development committee, he’s one vote in favor of keeping the lunchtime parking.

"It is offered at municipalities I would consider comparative,” he said, citing Ambler in particular, and said committee members and other business owners "have said ‘This is the one good thing we have going for us.’ Whether or not that’s true, that’s the perception — I can’t support a plan that gets rid of lunch parking,” Ladley said.

Any changes to rates or hours could only be recommended by the parking authority, then would need a formal vote from council, Dunigan said: "If your intuition is better than the professionals, vote your intuition.”

Resident Carole Farrell then asked how signage could be added to make the Luxor lot next to the freight station visible for public use, and Dunigan said that’s another topic for discussion, and integrating those spots into the town’s online aps and social media could be a start.

"Just simply having a sign, and then eventually integrating it into where you can find it online, and then (word) eventually will spread. I can’t make anybody just park there, but it’s a valid point and we definitely have already taken note of it,” Dunigan said.

Councilman BJ Breish added that he’s heard talks by the economic development committee about valet parking, and ho w that could be used to better fill lots outside of downtown, and asked if the study included feedback from visitors out of town.

"Some of the best feedback I’ve gotten about our parking is from folks outside the community, and the businesses are trying to attract those customers,” he said.

Dunigan answered that he and the parking authority members are open to any and all feedback, and the purpose of the study was to be able to address those comments with hard data.

"All it does is give you a guide. You choose whether it goes to $1 an hour, or $2 an hour. We don’t have any rate-making authority, because it all gets done by ordinance: that’s you guys,” Dunigan said.

Lansdale’s borough council next meets at 8:30 p.m. on Nov. 1 with various council committees starting at 6:30 p.m., all at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine Street. For more information visit www.Lansdale.org.

This article appears courtesy of a content share agreement between North Penn Now and The Reporter. To read more stories like this, visit www.thereporteronline.com.