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Downtown Parking Updates

Downtown Voices

An Update on Downtown Parking

You’ve been hearing a lot about downtown parking lately, and we wanted to provide some information and updates, since we know many of you are interested in understanding the changes being discussed and their potential impact on Downtown Raleigh. And the proposal has changed significantly over the past few weeks, so we want to make sure you can better understand the City’s new potential changes to downtown parking.

Where The Process Started

These adjustments to downtown parking were initiated to generate more revenue for the City’s Parking Enterprise Fund, which pays for maintenance, debt, and security for the decks. That fund lost revenue when office workers left downtown during the 2020 pandemic. As such, the fund now runs at a deficit, which has inhibited maintenance in the City-owned decks.

On March 9th, City Staff presented City Council with a set of proposed changes to parking policies and rates that would have:

  • Increased on-street rates from $1.25/$1.50 to $2.50 per hour.
  • Doubled the hours of enforcement in all decks to 24 hours (currently 12 hours a day during weekdays).
  • Extended enforcement hours to Saturdays in the decks.
  • Increased the hourly rates in decks to $3/hr and $4/hr depending on the deck.
  • Increased the cost of monthly passes in the decks from $125/month to $135/month.
  • Introduced a $60/month fee for the Small Business Parking Program.
  • Reduced the Free 2 Hour Parking program to 1 hr.

Taken together, these changes would have aggressively raised rates across nearly every part of the system at once for visitors, downtown employees, residents, and small businesses.

Why We Got Involved

Many of our small business owners and other downtown stakeholders were concerned about the potential adverse impact of these changes. We do believe in and support a downtown that is transit-rich, walkable, and bikeable. But access to parking is also still necessary for our businesses to thrive and to give time for deeper investments to be made in transit, multi-modal transportation, and denser housing.

That's why we engaged City Council and staff, and used our voice to encourage you to share comments with Raleigh City Council members to provide feedback on the proposal and the potential impact of the changes.

Thanks to your outreach and comments, the final recommendations look meaningfully different.

Where We Are Now

City staff presented the final recommendations at a budget session on April 9th, which included significant changes from the first proposal we saw in March. These changes will be voted on in June as part of the overall FY27 City budget.

The updated proposal:

  • Makes the Free 2 hr Parking Program permanent in 5 City-owned decks.
  • Preserves the Small Business Employee Parking Program as a free program for storefront business employees.
  • Keeps the hours of enforcement at their current level for decks and on-street (so no weekend enforcement or nighttime after 6pm on-street, 7pm in decks) with the exception of the Cabarrus St. deck near the Convention Center.
  • Increases the hourly deck rate to $3/hr only after the first two free hours.
  • Increases enforcement hours in the Cabarrus St deck to 24 hours a day to be consistent with the nearby Convention Center and Performing Arts decks known as “event decks” that are already 24 hour enforcement.
  • Increases rate to $4 per hr in those event decks on southern end of downtown.
  • Still includes an increase in monthly rate from $125 to $135 to pay for increased maintenance and safety in decks. The last monthly rate increase was in 2019.
  • Increases the daily max rate in decks to $21 on most decks and $24 in the “event decks” near the Convention Center.
  • Increases on-street rates by 25 cents to $1.50 in parts of downtown where the rate is currently $1.25. Does not increase rate by 25 cents in downtown core where it is already $1.50.
  • Release an RFP for a Parking Study to provide more analysis of the City’s parking system.
  • Release an RFI to potentially sell the Wilmington Station Deck.

Comparison of Current Policy, Initial Proposal and Final Recommendations:

Non-Event Decks (Wilmington St., Moore Sq, Blount St, City Center/Red Hat & City Hall Decks)

Event Decks (Performing Arts, Convention Center, Cabarrus St.)

Small Business Employee Program & Monthly Parking Passes

Overall, this is a vast improvement over the first proposal. The preservation of the Free 2 hr Parking Program, the Small Business Employee Program, and the current hours of enforcement in most decks and on-street all represent big wins for downtown.

While we are pleased to see more modest changes to the on-street and deck rates, we did raise concerns about raising on-street parking rates without using turnover and demand data, which is typically what drives rate increases.

Our data shows that visitor traffic during weekdays from 8am-6pm in downtown has not fully returned to pre-pandemic levels, suggesting that demand does not yet necessitate an increase.

In their presentation, City staff shared that this new revenue could be used for proactive investments and new infrastructure such as new meters, bike corrals, and painting pedestrian crosswalks.

We acknowledge that the 25-cent increase is much more reasonable than the $1.00-$1.25 per hr. increases previously proposed. So, there was still good progress made on this part of the proposal and the final recommendation will have a lesser impact on downtown than earlier proposed increases.

Opportunities for Feedback

On April 9th, we hosted a virtual town hall meeting for City staff to present their proposal to the public and take questions. Email us to request a recording of the webinar if you were not able to attend.

If you’d like to speak directly to Council on this matter, you can sign up to speak at their April 14th meeting or any other future meeting featuring public comment (the 2nd and 3rd Tuesdays of each month), as well as the public hearing held on the CIty’s Budget, which typically occurs in June.

To sign up for public comment, visit this link to sign up before 3 pm on Friday, April 10th. You may also email your City Council members directly. Their contact information is available here.