Code change would allow City to extend restricted parking zone beyond D Street Northwest

Published 1:42 pm Wednesday, January 13, 2016

One-car driveways, no driveways, tiny lots, no lots.

Fact is, many Auburn residents live, work or study in places where off-street parking is slim to none.

It was with those folks in mind that the City Council sat down at City Hall on Monday to talk about the possibility of extending Auburn’s existing restricted parking zone to areas beyond the D Street Northwest neighborhood to which the city code now confines it.

That is, the council hashed out proposed code revisions that would remove language specific to D Street Northwest and allow the City engineer to manage and determine other places where this parking option could be used. What the City is contemplating at this time, however, is a code revision only; no additional locations have been proposed beyond D Street Northwest.

Ingrid Gaub, assistant director of engineering for the City of Auburn, noted that the original code was implemented in 2009 to address parking issues the City was having along A Street Northwest between Main and Third Street Northwest, where the properties were and are a mixture of school, residential and commercial uses.

“There were a lot of needs for different parking in that area, and the City wanted to implement restricted parking there, but that impacted the residential users in that area who don’t have off-street parking readily available to them,” Gaub explained.

What the City came up with back then was a restricted parking zone that allowed people to park on the street between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. with a parking permit and for the City to manage the parking program for that location. This revision allowed property owners along a street to park up to three vehicles and one visitor on their street by using the permit and for the City to sign the street as “Permit Parking Only”.

Considering other parking restrictions in the downtown in 2016, Gaub said, the way the above-referenced section of the code was written limits the City’s ability now to apply that restricted parking to other areas.

In the downtown area under Auburn’s parking management plan, the City is putting in place three-hour parking throughout the downtown, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. What that means, especially for older residential areas that don’t necessarily have driveways or off-street parking, is that they have to move their cars every three hours at night.

Councilman Rich Wagner, a member of the Council in 2009, recalled that the council’s intent was to try the restricted zone out for a while in the one area.

“Did it work,” Wagner asked Gaub?

“It has worked,” Gaub replied. “It has not been a significant administrative burden at this point in time. Depending on how many additional areas the City decides to add over time, that may change. … Right now, it’s a very simple administration.”