While SDOT is taking its foot off the pedal and reducing the planned jump in metered parking rates across the city, the extension of paid parking hours until 8 PM on Capitol Hill and the nine neighborhoods with “active nightlife and high evening parking demand isn’t changing. Capitol Hill’s Broadway area and First Hill are also two of the four Seattle neighborhoods that will still see rate increases under the revised plan. Pike/Pine’s planned increase is now off the board — though you’ll be paying until 8 PM starting in “early February.” Details on the new SDOT parking rate plans are below.

The new SDOT paid parking changes

About a week ago, we reported on the city’s plans to raise paid parking rates on Broadway and in Pike/Pine to up to $3 per hour. But some said the numbers didn’t add up. And business groups called for delays.

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) today announced modifications to neighborhood on-street parking rates for 2011. Based on a thorough review of the City’s rate-setting approach, rates for 2011 will go up in four neighborhoods, down in 11 neighborhoods and will stay the same in seven others as compared to 2010 rates. This will result in 73 percent of paid spaces having either no change or a rate reduction.

 

During this critical reevaluation, undertaken at the direction of Mayor McGinn and the Seattle City Council, SDOT reviewed its policy direction, data and methodology for setting rates. The rates announced today (outlined in the attached chart) should allow the City to better achieve its goal of one to two open spaces on average per block.

 

“We’ve taken a critical second look at our data and methodology for setting parking rates,” said Charles Bookman, SDOT’s director of Traffic Management. “These modifications are a reflection of the mayor’s and City Council’s commitment to data-driven policies to make it more likely for motorists to find an open spot on the street.”

 

In adopting the 2011 budget, the Seattle City Council directed SDOT to set rates to achieve an average of one or two available spaces per block in each neighborhood. During its review process, the department revised its methodology for achieving such on-street availability to more closely align with this policy direction. Most significantly, SDOT adjusted its target occupancy range to 71 percent to 86 percent, instead of the previously used 58 percent to 78 percent, which better corresponds to the seven parking spaces per block found on average in paid parking neighborhoods. The plan to extend paid parking hours for the nine neighborhoods with active nightlife and high evening parking demand, announced on January 14, remains unchanged.

 

Starting in early February, the new rates will be rolled out over the course of two months on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis. Later this spring and summer, after the implementation, SDOT will collect parking data to determine how the new rates are altering parking behavior in each Seattle paid-parking neighborhood.