Parking is tight on East Hill (where I grew up).
Ithaca's Board of Public Works OKs long-term parking in city garage
Board discusses other efforts to decrease cars in Collegetown
By Krisy Gashler •
kgashler@gannett.com • December 11, 2008
Ithaca's Board of Public Works voted Wednesday to allow long-term parking in some areas of the Cayuga garage but held off on a proposal central to the Collegetown urban plan — to give Cornell students a discount for storing their cars downtown to keep them out of Collegetown.
The Board also formally voted to move ahead on bridge projects, in hopes that they could be funded by a federal economic stimulus package based on infrastructure repair.
City garages generally have a 72-hour time limit, otherwise cars can be towed, Superintendent of Public Works Bill Gray said.
The city regularly gets requests from students who want to store their cars for a month or more during winter breaks, City Chamberlain Debbie Parsons said.
Because the Cayuga garage does not fill its capacity, meaning the city has to pay to subsidize it, Gray and Parsons recommended that the Board remove the time limit for at least part of the garage.
The city is slated to subsidize garages by $905,000 in 2009.
The Board voted unanimously to remove the time limit but not to reduce the daily rate for long-term parking.
On the broader issue of creating a cheaper parking rate for people who would store their cars and only use them up to 10 times per month, Board members asked for more information before taking a position.
The issue is central to the controversial transportation component of the Collegetown urban plan. The city's consultants have called for increasing density in Collegetown while eliminating or reducing developer's requirements to build parking spaces.
Developers would instead be required to pay into a fund that would cover things like mass transportation or a remote parking garage.
While the consultants say the change will eventually result in fewer students bringing cars to Collegetown, long-term residents in Collegetown and Belle Sherman have said the result will be more student cars in their neighborhoods.
One mitigation suggested by the consultants was to let students park cheaply in under-filled downtown parking garages during the transition.
Board member Ray Schlather said such a proposal could impact city revenue from other parking agreements that are based on the cheapest rate charged by the city.
It's already less expensive to park in the downtown garages than in Collegetown's Dryden Road garage. The maximum parking rate in the downtown garages is $7 per day while it's $12 per day in Collegetown.
The Board voted unanimously to recommend that Common Council set up capital projects to do engineering work for the South Cayuga Street bridge over Six Mile Creek and the Lake Street bridge over Fall Creek in hopes that the construction could be funded in a federal economic stimulus package.
Gray said regardless of the funding source, the bridges will have to be repaired within the next five years because the decks have deteriorated to the point that the city is “now patching the patches.”
Gray reported that an aide from Sen. Charles Schumer's office contacted him and said Schumer is interested in using the federal stimulus for green building projects like mass transit and bike/pedestrian pathways.
Schlather recommended the city consider asking for money to build part of the Black Diamond Trail, especially the proposed bridge over Cayuga Inlet, which would connect West Hill with the heavily utilized commercial strip on Route 13.