AMHERST — Increasing the price for premium parking spots, extending the hours of meter enforcement and adjusting the winter parking ban are among ideas for improving downtown parking the Select Board could decide this summer.
The Downtown Parking Group, which has been studying possible changes for nearly a year, will bring a series of recommendations, many based on what is known as a “demand-based pricing” model, to a public meeting June 22 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Woodbury Room in the Jones Library.
“The idea is to preview what they will recommend to the Select Board in July,” said Senior Planner Nathaniel Malloy.
Malloy said this will give the committee time to tweak its current thinking should residents, business owners and employees object to what is being contemplated.
The working group, whose chairwoman is Select Board member Connie Kruger, is using a report from NelsonNygaard Consulting Associates of Boston as the basis for its recommendations.
The overarching strategy is to make things consistent and easier for customers and to maximize the parking the town has, Malloy said.
The report showed nearly 3,400 parking spaces downtown, but more than half as either in private lots or parking spaces by permit, which are generally off-limits until the evening. The report also noted there is sufficient parking even without building a second parking garage.
A second parking garage has been an idea floated by the business community as several “in-fill” mixed-use projects, some with limited parking, are developed downtown, including the under-construction One East Pleasant.
The idea of demand-based pricing is to give more options for people coming to Amherst.
“Long enough for people to run errands, but not short enough to discourage them from coming,” Malloy said.
The plan is create a new map in which spaces closest to the heart of downtown, called the “parking core,” will have charges of $1 per hour. The locations outside of this core will remain 50 cents an hour.
There would also be greater consistency, with all lots and meters having four-hour limits, except the town-owned lot behind CVS Pharmacy on North Pleasant Street, where people could still park for eight hours.
Enforcement, too, would be the same everywhere, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. There is confusion as the enforcement begins and ends at different times for on-street meters, the various lots and the Boltwood parking garage.
Malloy said other proposals include increasing the cost for annual parking permits and changing the winter parking rules in effect between Dec. 1 and April 1. Currently, there is no overnight parking on any street, with a few exceptions. The new rule would be modeled after cities such as Northampton, where on-street parking during the cold-weather months would be allowed at all times, including overnights, except when there is a snow emergency.
The hope is to have the new rules in place by September, when the new school year begins, and following the installation of new machines in the parking lots and parking garage that will process credit card transactions more quickly and be easier for people to use, Malloy said.
For more information, visit https://www.amherstma.gov/2241/Downtown-Parking-Working-Group
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.