City’s new parking czar to tackle Short North puzzle

Parking in the Short North has puzzled Columbus officials for years. They have halted permitting, paid for consultants to study the issue, developed plans and pumped their brakes.

Now, it’s Robert Ferrin’s problem. The Columbus Department of Public Service hired Ferrin as its new assistant director for parking services in November. He will oversee parking enforcement, thousands of meters, permits and parking policies.

Solving Short North parking problems, though, is at the top of his to-do list. And he expects to start rolling out solutions in 2018.

“Parking problems are good problems to have,” Ferrin said. “If you don’t have parking problems, you have other problems that make parking seem insignificant.”

After years of study of the Short North, the city was close to starting a three-year pilot plan for the thriving business district and surrounding neighborhoods. It would have divided neighborhoods on both sides of High Street into permit zones, with drivers who

didn’t hold permits using smartphones to pay for on-street parking, among several other changes.

The city shelved the plan in July after a group of residents protested, saying it didn’t do enough to protect them from overcrowding.

Ferrin said the city isn’t abandoning that plan, but he is taking a fresh look at which pieces can be salvaged. He wants the city to take a broader view, encouraging visitors to use alternative transportation instead of driving directly to the Short North and parking there.

That could include diverting more drivers to Downtown parking lots that empty out after the business day, and developing options such as the Cbus circulator to transport those drivers to the Short North, Ferrin said.

“The status quo was never acceptable. If you talk to folks, you will hear that we still need to do something,” said Councilman Shannon G. Hardin, who worked on the plan for the council. “I sense that people are willing to work on something.”

Residents are optimistic about the potential for a solution with Ferrin at the

helm, said Mark Bocija, a member of a resident-led group called Preserve Short North Neighborhoods.

“We are happy the city hired someone with parking chops who is highly qualified,” he said.

The Short North Alliance, which represents businesses in the area, also was happy to see someone with expertise chosen to lead the effort to fix parking problems, said Betsy Pandora, the organization’s executive director.

“The need to address solutions for parking in the Short North continues to be critically important,” she wrote in an email.

In Denver and Aurora, Colorado, Ferrin worked on similar problems in business districts where on-street parking had become overcrowded. Before he moved to Columbus to take the job with the city, Ferrin worked on parking programs in both cities. He will be paid $117,500 a year in Columbus.

As in the case in the Short North, permit areas in the Baker South Broadway area of Denver varied from block to block. Denver developed a plan that created larger permit zones. Ferrin said car sharing and other options helped unclog some parking congestion, too.

Ferrin said Columbus has

to identify the right technology — such as smartphone payment systems — to make a new plan work. The Short North will be the testing ground for technology that eventually will be used throughout Columbus.

Parking permits also have to move away from hang tags, Ferrin said, because they are easy to forge. The city probably will adopt license-plate readers as suggested by the parking plan.

He said the city will not put parking kiosks in neighborhoods, but it could use them in commercial areas in the future instead of meters.

Bocija said residents want the city to be transparent in how officials are developing a plan, and to use “evidence-based thinking” to come up with a plan that balances the interests of residents, visitors and businesses.

The department also has to do a better job of explaining to people how the Short North parking plan will affect their daily lives, Ferrin said.

“It has to be simple,” he said. “It can’t be something you have to have a background in this to understand.”