With business owners in the International District pushing the city to review 2011’s paid parking increases in their neighborhood, city officials say there aren’t any plans for a similar review on Capitol Hill. But we are scheduled for a discount. 

Last week, the Seattle Department of Transportation announced it would launch a review of the impact of extended paid parking hours in the ID:

We will be conducting a business intercept survey in collaboration with other City departments and neighborhood stakeholders to determine how people are getting to Chinatown/International district and how parking policies affect their decisions. These surveys will take place in March and will be conducted by EMC research in multiple languages.

Also in March we will perform another parking occupancy survey of the Chinatown-International District. OED will reach out to businesses and will work with us to determine what other data points need to be gathered. As with all other paid parking neighborhoods, if parking occupancy is outside the target range, we will make adjustments.

The Seattle Times reported on a group of community groups and restaurant owners in the ID who say their businesses have been severely damaged by the extension of paid parking hours beyond 6p. SDOT introduced the extra two hours of paid parking in the neighborhood as part of a citywide overhaul last year but rates in the ID remain unchanged at $2.50 per hour.

The extended paid hours were also rolled out on Capitol Hill last June following changes in pricing around the area earlier in the year.

While there has been grumbling from some business owners about the extended hours, a representative for SDOT says no surveys like the ones being done in the International District are currently being planned for Capitol Hill. “In the future, we’d like to find opportunities to do more of these types of surveys in other paid parking areas,” the representative said.

But Broadway is due for some cheaper rates — at least in one section of the busy street. In September, we reported that, after examining data from the first months of paid parking changes across the neighborhood, planners had decided to lower the street parking rate from $3 to $2.50 on Broadway between John/Olive Way and Pine after reviewing capacity data from the Hill. The SDOT rep we spoke to said that reduction designed to make the stretch more enticing to parkers should be introduced by summer.

The city has stated that its goal is to achieve an 80% occupancy rate on all blocks so that a space or two is free most of the day. Here’s a map of parking occupancy around Broadway from the city’s fall study. The boxed area shows streets where the rates will be lowered to $2.50 per hour.

According to that fall analysis, even with the extended hours and higher prices, finding evening parking on north Broadway and Broadway near Pike/Pine were the biggest challenges for drivers — though the study noted that 12th Ave near Pike/Pine was also an area of “high demand.”