Myra Griffin
The Houston Sun
The confusion that is known better as parking in downtown Houston may be solved once the signs are changed to a different design, reduced and organized in a uniform manner to relieve the stress, towing and ticketing that is associated with parking in downtown.
Mayor Parker has a vision to grow the downtown sector and wants more and more people to come and visit. She mentioned Discovery Green, Market Square Park, the free public activities and festivals downtown as why people should come downtown and if the parking is less complicated it may increase the flow of people.
“We want people to come downtown and have a great time and go back and find there car is still in the same place where they left it,” said Mayor Parker. “My goal is to write fewer parking tickets in downtown Houston and encourage everyone to come out and have a good time. It’s going to take us a while to get through the thicket of signs but when we do its going to be a much more pleasant experience.”
Parker believes there ought to be consistency across downtown with fewer signs. As of now there are 120 different sign in downtown directing you where you can and can’t park and at what time you can, if it’s metered parking or for commercial parking and on and on. With the abundance of signs Parker said it is easy to miss the one that applies to the stretch of pavement you want to park in. Once the project is over it should go from a 120 different signs to 25 by next year.
“It’s important to me that any place that your not suppose to park that we get those curbs painted and we keep them painted,” said Mayor Parker. “I don’t want any “gotchas” out there.”
It will take about a year to get all 5,800 signs that populate downtown removed and replaced with what the city calls a double blank. It will have instructions on one side of the panel and on the other side of the panel and at the maximum one sign underneath. This will replace the totem pole sign that has multiple signs on one pole that offer various instructions that can become very confusing to interpret.
“There will be a uniform design and time requirements that applies to the block face, different types of meter bags, there will be more parking inventory created because the public work transportation crew went out and looked at all the mobility lanes and went out and assessed if all of the lanes that are designated as mobility lanes are really relevant and needed right now due to traffic patterns,” said Christopher Newport, Parking Management. “They were able to free up some additional inventory there. So it makes parking easier downtown and I think we will get an attractive product out of it at the end.”
The problem with surface lots and fake car parkers on the weekends was also addressed by Mayor Parker. The surface lots that aren’t available on the weekends are suppose to be chained off to show unavailability, yet there have been accounts of men ripping off Houstonians and those who come and visit downtown in the private surface lots. Mayor Parker has promised to continue to monitor that and make sure people don’t get deceived when coming downtown and thinking they are safe because they are in a private surface lot and then come back and find their car towed.
“We’re hoping to give out fewer parking tickets in downtown and I absolutely believe we will give out fewer parking tickets when we get through with all this sign replacement,” said Mayor Parker. “Now we will write tickets whenever you are illegally parked and we can do traffic enforcement 24/7. That’s why we don’t want to sneak up on anybody and we don’t want to make it confusing. We want you to know if you’re illegally parked were going to get you but we want to make it easier not to illegally park.”
With a cleaner looking block face it should be easier for people who don’t come to downtown on a regular basis to feel comfortable when they do and park on the streets. It should also make it easier for them to find an off street parking options.
The signs that will come down will become art and will be handled by The Downtown Management District. The project will be released upon their discretion.