Website fixes would improve downtown residential parking
Downtown Annapolis (DTA) is historic and colorful, bustling and walkable, and who wouldn’t want to live in the thick of it all?
We are three longtime DTA residents who love this city, from the cult bands playing at Rams Head to the high tea at Reynolds Tavern, from Wednesday night Dinner Under the Stars to competitive games of pickleball. We are three longtime downtown residents with one common, gigantic complaint.
Parking. Understand: we are NOT concerned about availability. We are not troubled by density, endless circling, traffic or long walks at midnight to and from our cars on irregularly cobbled brick sidewalks. We support ParkMobile and the benefits of permit enforcement, and we understand more cars are registered to the historic district then there are parking spots.
What we are concerned about is the willful mismanagement of RESIDENTIAL parking in DTA by Premium Parking, and the continued blind eye turned toward the reasonable suggestions of District 1 and District 2 residents.
When Hillman Garage came down, Premium Parking quietly implemented changes to residential privileges that will stand for the next 30 years: in particular, we lost free two-hour parking for guests.
Think about that for a second … if your friend is having a bad day, and wants to drop by for moral support, they now have to pay for the visit. If you yourself are not feeling well, and one of your friends wants to come by with a cup of soup, they have to shell out $4 an hour, $8 for two, just like everyone else. Premium Parking now administers these acts of friendship like business transactions.
We can still buy guest parking passes. But despite the mounds of paperwork we fill out every year to establish our residency, our guest passes are still controlled on a monthly basis by “promo codes.” One code per month, 12 codes per year. And this is just for the 24-hour guests passes. We have another set of 12 for the six-hour passes, and still another code for “anytime” passes. That is 25, 15-digit codes per year, every year, for the next 30 years. And the application process takes more than 24 hours, longer on a weekend. And yes, you guessed it. After working a 10-hour day, we don’t always remember our promo codes before our guest pulls up to the door. And then comes the $300 ticket and the time-consuming back-and-forth email exchange of the appeal.
This particularly irritates technically savvy residents, because we know the purpose of these promo codes is to manually bridge a programming gap that Premium Parking can’t be bothered to fix.
But wait, there’s more. We can’t request guest passes for more than one day, even if we know in advance the number of days our guests will be visiting. And we can’t renew the pass on a given vehicle until the current 24-hour pass expires. If our friend arrives at 9 p.m., no problem at all. But the next night, we renew at 9:05 p.m., and the next, we slip to 9:30 p.m., and then 10 p.m., and soon we find ourselves losing sleep to renew a parking pass, all because Premium Parking can’t be bothered to track this on its website.
Our city officials are quietly making decisions that diminish residential life in the historic district. Why? We won’t hazard a guess here, but we implore our city officials to force Premium Parking to implement a few simple website fixes that will make a gigantic difference in the quality of residential life. #Down With Will fully Cumbersome Websites !# Residents Are Here To Stay!
Beth Dolezal is a 33-year resident of downtown Annapolis, a computer specialist, a U.S. Department of Justice retiree and a member of the Annapolis Board of Transportation. Luisa Girlando is a 18-year resident of downtown Annapolis and a principal staff analyst at ARINC. Susan Margulies is an eightyear resident of downtown Annapolis and a Naval Academy professor.