1 STAFF REPORT
DATE: October 24, 2023
TO: Justin Hess, City Manager
FROM: Patrick Prescott, Community Development Director VIA: David Kriske, Assistant Community Development Director, Transportation
BY: Nick Burant, Administrative Analyst II
Angelica Gonzales, Parking Analyst
Karen Pan, Transportation Services Manager
SUBJECT: Consideration of a Parking Management Plan for Downtown Burbank
RECOMMENDATION
Direct staff to develop a proposed Parking Management Plan for Downtown Burbank, including a proposed ordinance, resolution, budget, and any associated agreements for implementation.
BACKGROUND
Parking spaces are available throughout the City, but there is no Parking Management Plan to address the needs of the daytime population and specific areas of the City where there is high demand for parking. Parking management issues have been identified repeatedly as part of land use and transportation decisions made by Council over the years. To address parking management issues, on May 21, 2019, Council approved six Citywide Parking Management Objectives as a first step to guide implementation of parking management in the City.
These overarching objectives help Council communicate the priorities staff should consider when developing parking management projects, and help implement the City’s Burbank2035 General Plan, specific plans, Greenhouse Gas Reduction Plan, and other policy documents. The six Citywide Parking Management Objectives are summarized in Attachment 1.
COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENT
2 After adopting these objectives , Council directed staff to manage parking at the Downtown Burbank Metrolink Station. Council approved a new Ordinance changing the Burbank Municipal Code (BMC) to better manage Burbank’s public parking lots and structures, and it later deferred specific actions to implement parking at the Metrolink Station due to low Metrolink transit ridership and low parking utilization at the station.
While low transit ridership and parking utilization at the station persists, staff believes that it remains premature to begin parking management at this location.
As an alternative to staff’s original parking management proposal, staff reviewed the most impacted parking areas in the City. Staff believes that Downtown Burbank – specifically the on-street parking spaces on San Fernando Boulevard between Magnolia Boulevard and Olive Avenue, as well as Palm Avenue, Orange Grove, and Olive Avenues between First and Third Streets – i s a better candidate for imp lementing the City’s first comprehensive parking management program. This area is one of the most impacted on- street parking areas in the City with low parking availability and little turnover, and the condensed area allows for a limited implementation.
The City is well positioned to begin implementing parking management in Downtown Burbank. This report outlines the elements of how staff proposes to implement parking management, which will include infrastructure considerations, parking enforcement, and staff’s proposed management strategy. The report will conclude with the steps staff recommends taking towards a paid parking implementation, should Council accept staff’s recommendation.
DISCUSSION
The City of Burbank currently uses a limited set of tools to manage on- street parking throughout the City. Some residential streets have permit or time-limited restrictions, and residents must petition to have these restrictions implemented. Commercial corridors and Downtown Burbank typically have time-limits, which can be 90-minutes or two hours. The City also owns or manages a number of public off-street parking spaces to complement on-street parking and to absorb parking demand. The City sells day -use and monthly permits for these public lots and structures at $6 per day and $52 per month.
Parking along Downtown San Fernando Boulevard between Olive Avenue and Magnolia Boulevard falls short of the City’s P arking Management Objectives. First, there is low availability of on-street parking next to the businesses . This is a concern since those parking spaces are intended for those that are shopping or eating at one of the businesses, but are often occupied by longer term visitors or employees. Second, there are limited regulations (only a 90- minute daytime restriction and an overnight parking prohibition), and no fees. Because there is no fee, there is no incentive for drivers to move their vehicles when they are finished with their visit. Finally, there is only minor tailoring of regulations to the conditions of Downtown Burbank. The 90-minute time restriction is 3 unique in Burbank but does not address the different parking demands made on the different parking resources throughout Downtown.
Parking Management Objectives
Staff believes that better management of the public parking in Downtown Burbank will improve the experience of those who visit the area by car and will support the Downtown business community by making it easier for customers to visit these shops and restaurants. Staff seeks to meet the following objectives when managing parking in Downtown Burbank:
1. Ensure customers can reliably find parking within walking distance of their destination. Currently, on-street parking in Downtown Burbank is fully occupied for most hours of the day, which makes it inconvenient for its visitors to find parking that’s convenient to their final destination. Even though there are over 6,000 parking spaces available for Downtown Burbank visitors, the lack of available convenient parking gives the perception that there is lack of parking in that area.
2. Increase access to businesses by ensuring turnover of parked cars.
Because on-street parking is heavily utilized, customers are not able to access certain Downtown Burbank businesses that rely on quick “in- and-out” trips, such as coffee shops, quick- serve restaurants, and other convenience- based businesses. Ensuring parking turnover of these prime parking spaces will provide increased access to these businesses, while shift ing long-term parking to nearby lots and parking structures.
3. Reduce emissions and lessen traffic congestion from drivers circling in search of parking. Studies of commercial districts like Downtown Burbank suggest that a significant percent of vehicle trips in these areas are due to drivers hunting for parking spaces. Managing on- street parking so that a few spaces per block are always free will reduce vehicle trips, improve congestion, and reduce carbon emissions.
Staff believes that a Parking Management Plan that achieves these objectives would use parking fees to encourage parking turnover and ensure that a few parking spaces on each block are always available for short -term parking while long- term parkers are shi fted to less convenient but more available parking on the periphery of Downtown Burbank. This use of fees to encourage turnover will provide better access to businesses, reduce traffic congestion, and improve customers’ experience parking and visiting the area.
Proposed Implementation Plan
Staff developed a plan that would implement the City’s Parking Management Objectives and achieve the three parking management objectives identified for San Fernando Boulevard. As discussed above, staff proposes to manage parking availability with price. 4 Staff recommends the City target an 80% occupancy rate, meaning that prices will be set at a rate so that 80% of the spaces are occupied and therefore about 20% are open. In practice this means one to two spaces per block-face are available at any one time. Staff’s recommendation is to reinvest the parking revenues into the City’s parking fund, so that any revenues are used to maintain the City’s public parking lots and structures . To implement parking fees, the P arking Management Plan requires a method to collect revenues, an enforcement strategy, and a parking management platform that ties revenue collection and parking enforcement together in order to achieve the City’s 80% occupancy goal.
Paid Parking Infrastructure
The City has a large menu of tools available to manage on-street parking with fees. While the most basic tool to regulate on- street parking is to utilize time restrictions, staff recommends for Downtown Burbank to use time restrictions in combination with paid parking to address the parking conditions in this neighborhood. Revenue can be collected via physical devices as well as online to improve convenience to drivers and efficiency in revenue collection. There are two types of paid parking devices and each has its own subset of options. The older and more widespread is the single space parking meter. Staff does not recommend this option for several reasons: they require a large installation of infrastructure, impact sidewalk width, require painting of parking stalls in the street , require heavier maintenance, and revenue collections are more costly.
The alternative type of paid parking device is the multi-space kiosk, a developed payment option. There are three types:
1. P ay-and-Display: Customer pay s for parking and display s a receipt on their vehicle’s dashboard. Enforcement checks the validity of the receipt displayed on the vehicle’s dashboard to ensure the vehicle has paid.
2. P ay-by-Space: Customer enters a parking space number and pays for parking.
Enforcement checks a database to ensure the space has been paid. This method also requires painting of parking spaces.
3. P ay-by-License Plate: Customer enters license plate number and pays for parking.
Enforcement checks a database to locate the license plate number to ensure the vehicle has paid for parking. The driver’s license plate is essentially the proof of payment.
Staff does not recommend “P ay-and-Display” based on inconvenient user experience, such as going back to a vehicle after paying for parking. This does not provide a frictionless, convenient, customer service experience. The “Pay-by-Space” alternative is also not recommended for similar customer service reasons . I n addition, this method requires additional costs to paint and maintain parking stalls and numbers. Staff recommends the “Pay-by-License Plate” option since it has the highest level of customer 5 convenience. Once customers have recorded their license plate in the parking system, they do not have to return to their car to place a receipt or check parking stall numbers., In addition, this option does not require the installation of parking stalls and numbers, and eases enforcement and revenue collection.
Relatively new to the paid parking arena are mobile pay applications. Payments may be made through dedicated smartphone applications, links to mobile browser pages , or through phone text messages. Both the mobile pay options and multi -space parking kiosks (Pay-by-License Plate) can be utilized together to provide the public with the highest level of parking customer service while providing the City with the most efficient means to collect revenue and enforce parking rules. Combining these two methods can also provide the City and the public with essential data and performance metrics. The City can collect and summarize parking occupancy rates, turnover, enforcement efficiency, and other financial data. This will assist Council in making informed decisions about how to better manage the City’s parking programs and infrastructure, and track whether the Parking Management Plan is achieving its goal of improving parking turnover and making spaces more readily available for the public.
Parking Enforcement
The Burbank Police Department manages parking enforcement within the City and is responsible for maintaining traffic safety by enforcing parking laws, removing vehicles that are obstructing the roadway, and impounding abandoned vehicles. The City has an existing Professional Services Agreement with LAZ Parking California, LLC for parking enforcement services. The Police Department’s parking enforcement program issues parking citations to violators of the BMC and the California Vehicle Code (C VC). These types of violations include, but are not limited to, illegal parking in restricted areas, overtime parking in commercial areas and residential neighborhoods, 72- hour parking restrictions, and street sweeping violations.
A paid parking implementation will require parking enforcement beyond what the existing parking enforcement contractor is currently providing. As an example, failure to pay the posted parking rates would be added to local codes as a type of violation. If directed to move forward with implementing paid parking management in Downtown Burbank, staff would investigate whether the City needs more enforcement staff on the current contract, or if a separate contract would be necessary to augment enforcement in Downtown. The enforcement mechanism will include the use of license plate recognition technology, or LPR, which is currently used by the City’s parking enforcement contractor . This technology further reinforces staff’s recommendation to use the “P ay-by-License Plate” method discussed above.
6 Management Strategy
The Community Development Department (CDD) currently has only two budgeted positions fully dedicated to managing all the City’s parking programs. The infrastructure and enforcement components of a paid parking program are staff intensive. CDD does not currently have the staffing resources to operate an expanding parking program which includes on-street paid parking.
A Parking Operator is needed to carry out day-to-day parking operations. This will include installing and maintaining the required hardware of parking kiosks and signs, software for parking revenue collection and parking smart phon e application, and provide the personnel support in enforcement and revenue collection that is needed to manage parking. The Parking Operator will also be able to address customer service issues and will work closely with staff to provide analysis of parking and financial data. The P arking Operator will als o help the City meet the 80% parking occupancy goal and ensure that there are open parking spots available.
The primary purpose of charging for parking is to manage availability of parking to the public. The goal is to charge a fee just high enough to achieve the City’s 80% occupancy target. Charging for parking will generate revenue to the City from the Parking Management Plan. Staff recommends that the revenue be used to offset the cost to implement the Parking Management Plan. If revenue exceeds operati ons costs, this excess revenue should be reinvested back into Downtown Burbank parking infrastructure, such as to improve parking garage maintenance.
Next Steps
The CVC places certain requirements on municipalities that charge for on-street parking.
These requirements include adoption of an ordinance that, among other things, sets the boundaries of the on- street area where a parking fee will be charged. Should Council move forward with the recommendation, staff will develop and write an O rdinance which will allow the City to charge fees for parking in accordance with the CVC specifications.
The Citywide Fee Schedule will also be updated to include new parking and citation fees.
In addition, the parking fee portion of the Ordinance will have to be flexible to allow staff the ability to adjust fees administratively to find the appropriate fee needed to achieve the 80% parking occupancy goal.
Should Council move forward with the recommendation, another major step would be to solicit and procure a Parking Operat or to provide all the services necessary to install, operate, maintain, and enforce paid parking. In addition, outreach must be conducted to the businesses and other stakeholders in Downtown Burbank to introduce the proposed plan and get feedback . This could occur through direct outreach, coordination with the Downtown Burbank Partnership , the B urbank Chamber of Commerce, and through 7 meetings with the Transportation Commission, Infrastructure Oversight Board, and Planning Commission . Staff has met with Downtown Burbank Partnership and Transportation Commission to introduce the topic in preparation of the October 24th City Council meeting.
This proposed implementation plan would be a collaborative effort between the Community Development, Information Technology, Financial Services, Public Works, and Police Departments. Should Council direct staff to proceed with the plan outlined in this report, staff anticipates returning to Council with a proposed Ordinance, fee schedule resolution, and associated agreements in Spring 2024 and paid parking implementation will begin in Summer 2024.
This timeline is in alignment with the San Fernando Boulevard Re-configuration project that is expected to be completed in January 2024. Staff will be coordinating internally to ensure that there is a smooth transition from the current Downtown Burbank to a one-way San Fernando Boulevard. A critical component of the San Fernando Re- configuration project is to allocate space for loading zones and food delivery services . This is complementary to the Cit y’s P arking Management Plan for Downtown Burbank. By allocating spaces for loading zones and food delivery services, the City aims to ease parking demand in Downtown Burbank.
ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW
This staff report has no potential for resulting in a direct or reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change to the environment and falls outside the definition of a “project” under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and is therefore not subject to CEQA pursuant to Section 15378 of Title 14 of the California Code of Regulations. This staff report is for informational purposes only. Should staff move forward to implement the proposed Parking Management Plan, staff will conduct environmental review pursuant to CEQA to determine if the implementation plan or Ordinance will have an effect on the environment.
FISCAL IMPACT
There is no immediate fiscal impact by directing staff to proceed with parking management in Downtown Burbank. Should Council direct staff to proceed, staff would prepare the proposed regulations and solicit for a parking operator that would provide all the services necessary to install, operate, maintain, and enforce paid parking . Staff has conducted initial research that suggests the City could expect to pay a one -time, upfront cost of approximately $325,000 to procure and install the necessary infrastructure, as well as an annual cost up to $ 500,000 to pay for a parking operator to manage the program 8 and provide parking enforcement. These estimated costs are subject to change once staff begins the procurement process.
Staff anticipates annual revenue from the program will be approximately $500,000 per year. Once revenue is generated, costs to implement the parking management system would be paid by the revenues collected from parking fees. While implementation of paid parking for these on-street spaces will be offset by the parking revenue collected from the program, no net revenue in this first phase is expected. However, if parking management of these streets is successful, the City Council may wish to expand parking management to the other streets, lots, structures in Downtown Burbank, and revenue from a larger operation is expected to exceed costs. If surplus revenue is generated, staff recommends any surplus be retained in the City’s parking fund to be used to offset the operations, maintenance, and management of Downtown Burbank’s parking lots and structures . It should also be noted that these revenue figures do not account for the possible increased revenue generated from other general parking enforcement in Downtown Burbank.
CONCLUSION
Parking management is an essential tool to make parking easier for residents and visitors throughout the City. While previous Council direction was to begin comprehensive parking management at the Downtown Burbank Metrolink Station, it is recommended that Council direct staff to develop a Parking Management Plan for Downtown Burbank instead, as this area has once again become one of the most parking- impacted areas of the City since recovering from the pandemic. The proposed Parking Management Plan would manage the on- street parking spaces on San Fernando Boulevard and selected side streets in Downtown Burbank with parking fees so that one or two spaces per block are always available for residents and visitors. The plan would include a proposed Ordinance, Resolution, budget, and any associated agreements for implementation. This plan would represent the City’s first comprehensive effort in implement ing the Council’s Citywide Parking Management Objectives.
ATTACHMENTS
Attachment 1 – Citywide Parking Management Objectives
Attachment 2 – Proposed Map of Paid Parking