City Council
Staff Report
From: City Manager
Report Type: ACTION ITEMS
Lead Department: Transportation
Meeting Date: August 12, 2024
Report #:2407-3203
TITLE
Adoption of Resolutions Amending the Evergreen Park-Mayfield and Southgate Residential Preferential Parking Program Districts to Remove Parking Spots on El Camino Real Due to Caltrans’ Repaving and Bikeway Project and Moving Employee Permits to Other Locations in Each District; CEQA status - categorically exempt.
RECOMMENDATION
Pursuant to City Council direction on June 18, 2024 to amend the RPP Districts affected by Caltrans' El Camino Real Repaving and Bikeway project, which will remove most of the parking on El Camino Real, staff recommends that the City Council adopt the attached resolutions to (1) remove the parking spots located on El Camino Real from the Evergreen Park-Mayfield and Southgate RPP Districts; (2) reallocate 50 employee permits from El Camino Real (Zone G) to Zones A-D in the Evergreen Park-Mayfield (EPM) Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) district; (3) reallocate 20 employee permits from El Camino Real (Zone S1) into Zone S in the Southgate (SG) RPP district.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Parking will be removed along El Camino Real through the Caltrans State Route 82 El Camino Real (ECR) Repaving and Bikeway project. Employee parking in the Evergreen Park-Mayfield (EPM) and Southgate (SG) RPP programs along ECR will not continue due to the installation of bicycle lanes. In order to mitigate the parking loss, the City is pursuing a multifaceted strategy to reduce parking demand and accommodate needed parking where capacity exists.
One element of this strategy is to allow current employee permit holders to park in other zones within the two RPPs through 2024. Staff will measure and evaluate Zone and block parking capacity within the two RPP programs later this calendar year. Beginning in January 2025, additional employee spaces will be distributed within the two RPP program zones based on that measurement and evaluation of parking capacity.
Additionally, the City is undertaking work to ensure adequate parking near ECR for customers, visitors, and other stakeholders through the evaluation of different parking options and corresponding curb designations.
BACKGROUND
The Caltrans El Camino Real (ECR) Repaving and Bikeway project will remove on-street parking on ECR throughout Palo Alto as part of establishing ECR as a regional bikeway throughout the Peninsula and South Bay. In order to mitigate the impact of this parking loss on the Palo Alto community, the City is undertaking multifaceted actions:
Staff is engaging with ECR businesses:
o To provide short-term parking designations on cross streets immediately adjacent to ECR.
o To facilitate requests for the installation of additional bicycle parking. o To provide information about the garage and lot employee permits available at a lower cost than employee RPP permits.
The Palo Alto Transportation Management Association (PATMA) is engaging with ECR businesses to offer employees transit passes, bicycle incentives, and alternatives to single- occupancy vehicle parking, including the Palo Alto Link. Work continues with Caltrans and the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to ensure bus stops are integrated into the bikeway and maximize safety and usability for riders and cyclists.
Limited employee parking previously provided on ECR will be relocated into RPP zones where capacity exists.
Staff will review parking occupancy in the impacted RPP programs in the Fall and will conduct further outreach before any additional adjustments are determined for the new RPP sales cycles in 2025.
The EPM RPP currently has available 40 employee permits in Zone G along El Camino Real with an additional 10 held in reserve if needed. In EPM total of 48 employee permits have been sold in the current cycle. The SG RPP currently has available 20 employee permits in Zone S1 along El Camino Real. In SG a total of five (5) employee permits have been sold in the current cycle.
With the Caltrans El Camino Real Repaving and Bikeway project, El Camino Real will no longer have parking spaces available in these RPP districts.
The EPM RPP previously made up to 250 permits available to employees in Zones A-F, but these were removed in 2022 at Council’s direction (SR # 11795). Previous ordinance development activities are detailed in the Council-approved resolutions (RESO 9739 and RESO 9741).
ANALYSIS
Approximately 130 total parking spaces are being removed from the two impacted RPP programs. Adjustments now and in the future will account for both employee parking and increased business visitor usage.
EPM RPP
In 2022, Evergreen Park – Mayfield Zones A-F employee permits were reduced to zero. When parking is removed on ECR for the Caltrans project, staff proposes allowing Zone G holders to park in Zones A-D until the new permit cycle begins in January 2025. At that time, 40 permits, with 10 in reserve, will be distributed among Zones A-D according to parking availability. Staff will work to minimize significant impact on any particular block (occupancy above 65%) by ensuring that it is distributed evenly across the zones. Zones E and F are unnecessary for adjustments as these zones are easily served by new capacity provided by the new garage at 350 Sherman Ave. in the California Ave. parking district. Daily, quarterly, and annual passes are available at costs lower than those available in the RPP districts.
Table: Historical staff recommendations for impacted Evergreen Park employee zones Employee
Zones
2021
Employee
Permit Cap
2022 Employee
Permit Cap
Potential 2025
Recommended
Employee Permit Caps
Total Parking
Spaces Available
A 20 0 8 112
B 55 0 22 228
C 30 0 12 208
D 20 0 8 176
Annual counts taken in Spring 2023 in the EPM RPP suggest the neighborhood zones can accommodate the 40 to 50 employee permits and the increased 2-hour business customer visits. See Attachment A. While some blocks saw usage over 65%, the majority of blocks were below 65%. Zero blocks were over 85%, which is the threshold at which a block is considered to have high parking occupancy.
SG RPP
For the SG RPP, staff propose reallocating the 20 available Zone S1 permits into Zone S.
Evaluation in October will help determine whether this new availability is needed and whether Southgate Zone S needs additional reconfiguration to maintain parking availability prioritized for residential uses.
The City will measure and evaluate the levels of use later this calendar year. (It is anticipated that this work will occur in October 2024). The process will consist of counting available parking spaces on each block face to measure activity levels at various times of the day. These activity levels will be cross-referenced against prior activity counts. This data will inform the proposed allocation of parking permits from Zone S1 into Zone S.
FISCAL/RESOURCE IMPACT
This specific action is not likely to incur a significant fiscal impact, however, there will be some anticipated reduction in the number of employee permits sold. Staff are actively engaged in helping businesses in this area rely less upon neighborhood parking resources. As noted previously, there are currently 48 employee permits active on the ECR Zone G in EPM, and 5 on the ECR Zone S1 in SG. Options to lessen reliance on neighborhood parking resources for these permits include increased collaboration with the Palo Alto Transportation Management Association, to provide transit passes to employees, and reallocating business adjacent curb space. Curb space immediately perpendicular to ECR and immediately in front of business uses will be revised to have yellow or green curb restrictions and/or 2-hour commercial designations, as appropriate. If successful, these two options will decrease employee permit sales thereby decreasing revenues in these two districts. This would entail a minor increase in the General Fund financial support of this program reflective of the decrease in employee permit sales achieved.
STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT
Staff met with Chamber of Commerce representatives in May. In July, staff met with some businesses and residents, and continued discussions with others via email. A light survey was also distributed to businesses along the ECR corridor. Businesses in the corridor were generally disappointed with the Caltrans project and worried about how the loss of parking would impact their customers’ and employees’ access to their businesses. Residents of RPP zones of the impacted RPP programs in Southgate and Evergreen Park are generally unsupportive of the measures proposed by staff as they increase the business and daytime occupancy of neighborhood parking resources.
The recommended actions are an intermediate step toward balancing competing interests of finite curb space availability. Staff value the feedback given thus far, noting that the preponderance of both business and resident feedback is not in alignment with the intermediate steps recommended. Staff will continue to meet with impacted businesses and residents through the remaining calendar year, will assess impacts of the recommended actions on parking availability in each impacted neighborhood block with a Fall count, and will conduct further outreach before any additional adjustments are determined for the new RPP sales cycles in 2025, and then again before any additional changes following the end of the fiscal year.
ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW
These resolutions are exempt from the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) pursuant to Section 15061(b)(3) of Title 14 of the California Code of Regulations since it can be seen with certainty that there is no possibility the adoption and implementation of this resolution may have a significant effect on the environment and Section 15301 in that this proposed resolution will have a minor impact on existing facilities
ATTACHMENTS
Attachment A: IDAX Parking Occupancy Spring 2023 EPM-SG Attachment B: Resolution Amending and Restating the Evergreen Mayfield RPP District to Remove Parking Spots on El Camino Real and Reassign Employee Parking Permits within the District
Attachment C: Resolution Amending and Restating the Southgate RPP District to Remove Parking Spots on El Camino Real and Reassign Employee Parking Permits within the District APPROVED BY:
Philip Kamhi, Chief Transportation Official