BANGOR, Maine — A newly formed parking advisory committee will present a plan next week to charge $1 per hour for on-street parking downtown.
Addressing the Downtown Bangor Partnership on Tuesday, Jason Bird, liaison to the Downtown Parking Advisory Committee, said the group is recommending the implementation of metered parking downtown.
The fee-based system, he said, would discourage “car shuffling” in which motorists leave a vehicle parked downtown for the designated limit and then repark. It also would create a revenue source to pay for future parking infrastructure such as a new parking deck, he said.
“Part of the thinking was why would we want to saddle the residents and property taxpayers already within the city of Bangor when there might be a mechanism where those that live outside the city could help us pay for a facility that’s generated by their demand,” he said.
According to Bird, the parking committee plans to present its plan to the Business and Economic Development Committee on Tuesday. If granted a favorable recommendation there, the proposal would move to the City Council for consideration.
The proposal does not call for individual meters, which Bird said are expensive and interfere with snow removal. Instead, it calls for nine kiosks scattered around the downtown area.
Parking downtown has been free since 1979 when coin-fed meters lining downtown streets were removed, according to BDN archives.
Bird said exact locations for the kiosks have not been decided, but they would be solar powered and would allow users to purchase multiple hours of parking time.
In addition to standard payment methods, the proposal calls for kiosks to be accessible through smartphone applications that would enable users to add money without returning to the kiosk if they run out of time.
Under the proposed system, motorists would enter either their license plate number or the number of their parking space and purchase as many hours as they want.
That would make enforcement easier, he said, since parking officials would be able to see which spaces should have cars and which should not.
Bird estimated the city’s current parking enforcement program costs the city about $77,000 per year, despite there being $135,000 budgeted for income from parking tickets.
He was not sure if the more efficient system would result in the elimination of any parking enforcement jobs. City employees, overseen by the Bangor Police Department, monitor parking on foot patrols through downtown.
Republic Parking, which contracts with the city for about $70,000 per year, oversees the downtown parking garage, as well as Abbot Square, the Columbia Street deck, downtown permit lots and lots at Bangor International Airport. The city’s relationship with the Chattanooga-based parking management firm dates back 17 years.
Revenue estimates from the proposed system were not yet available Tuesday, nor was the anticipated cost of the kiosks. Bird told the partnership they expect the kiosks would pay for themselves in about a year.
Councilor Gibran Graham, a member of the partnership and the five-member parking committee, said a forward-looking plan is needed to accommodate continued economic growth in the downtown area.
“There’s going to be a crunch, and we have to think about that now, because the last thing I think any of us want — whether a business or just a resident — is for there to really be a problem that there is no parking available for that increased business,” he said.
Response from the downtown partnership was generally positive. Molly Briggs of Epstein Commercial Real Estate called the free one-hour spaces downtown “unrealistic” for clients of some businesses, inhibiting certain businesses from locating downtown.
“At least this gives somebody the flexibility of paying for two hours versus getting a ticket and not wanting to come back,” she said.
With 112 on-street spaces downtown, Bird said handicapped spaces and short-term loading spaces would be excluded.
Follow Evan Belanger on Twitter at @evanbelanger.