City set to raise parking fees, fines
Travers: Not a money grab, but long overdue
STAMFORD — A sign removed from the Glenbrook train station illustrates why Transportation Bureau Chief Jim Travers is seeking hikes in parking fees.
It reads: Municipal Parking. $3 per day. Effective 12-15-88.
“It’s still $3 a day,” said Travers, who is asking for the fee to be doubled. “There hasn’t been an increase there since 1988.”
Travers has other similar proposals before the Board of Representatives, which will hold public hearings on them this month before voting on whether to enact them.
The increases will bring Stamford closer to parking fees charged in surrounding communities, and raise revenue to improve municipal lots and garages, and on-street metering, Travers said.
“This isn’t simply, ‘Give us more money.’ We want to place the right value on parking so we can modernize our system,” Travers said. “The revenue goes into the Parking Fund, which we use to fix all the city’s parking structures.” Motorists face multiple changes.
For the city-owned parking lots at the Glenbrook and Springdale train stations, representatives are considering not only increasing the daily parking fee from $3 to $6, but hiking the monthly fee for residents
from $45 to $60, and raising the non-resident monthly fee from $90 to $110. The proposal includes a $1 hourly fee.
It’s less than a comparably sized city, New Haven, which charges $2 an hour and $97 a month for train station parking, according to Travers’ research.
And it’s less than Norwalk, which charges $12 a day — twice the proposal for Stamford — and $99 a month. It’s more in line with Bridgeport, which charges $6 a day and up to $70 a month.
The proposals also affect parking in downtown Stamford, where the hourly rate in city garages would increase from $1 to $1.25, and officers would begin Saturday enforcement.
It’s still cheaper than
Norwalk garages, which charge $2 an hour, and New Haven, which charges $4, Travers found.
He would like to increase rates at Stamford’s Summer Street garage, which allows monthly parking, from $80 to $90 for residents, and from $90 to $110 for nonresidents.
Street parking downtown will be affected, too.
Motorists who now pay $1 an hour will pay $1.50 if the proposal passes, and they will have to feed the meters between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. Now meter enforcement ends at 7 p.m.
Norwalk and New Haven already charge $1.50 an hour for on-street parking, Travers found. Bridgeport charges $1 and Greenwich charges 75 cents.
The on-street parking fee hike alone would boost annual revenue from $572,000 to $850,000, Travers said.
He also proposed increasing fines for motorists who are delinquent in paying their parking tickets, which range from $25 for overstaying time on a meter to $120 for the most serious municipal violations, such as parking within 10 feet of a fire hydrant or on a snow emergency route during a storm.
Now motorists who fail to pay or appeal a parking ticket within 30 days are assessed a $25 penalty. They pay another $25 for failing to pay 30 days after that.
It will be much more significant if the proposal passes.
The parking ticket will double if not paid after 15 days, and triple if not paid within 30 days of that.
The delinquency fines alone would bring in an additional $283,000 a year, according to Travers’ figures.
Altogether, the increases in parking fees and fines would amount to more than $1 million in annual added revenue to the Parking Fund, which took in $2.8 million last fiscal year, Travers said.
Stamford needs the money to repair garages and modernize meters, Travers said. Old meters at the Glenbrook and Springdale train stations no longer function, he said. The Bell Street garage needs a new electrical system. Other structures are rusting and need painting, or they need elevator repairs and other work, he said.
“We have garage pay stations that are so old we can’t get parts when they break. We have to cannibalize other pay stations to fix them,” Travers said. “We see what happens when we don’t care for our parking infrastructure — the state has to knock down the
garage at the downtown train station. I want to make timely investments so we don’t have to take a garage down to build another one.”
Modern equipment will make it easier for traffic officers to enforce parking laws — punching a licenseplate number instead of a space number into pay stations allows officers to check for violations using a license-plate reader. Installing state-of-the-art street meters will allow motorists to use credit cards, he said. Beachgoers will be able to obtain “virtual” passes so they don’t have to wait in long lines each summer for stickers, Travers said.
The Board of Representatives already passed one proposal. At their December meeting, members approved an amendment designed to improve crosswalk safety with penalties
that apply to motorists and pedestrians.
At the risk of a $100 fine, which may be issued by a civil citation officer, pedestrians must cross at intersections, marked or unmarked, and must obey any traffic or walk signals. The penalty for motorists who fail to yield the right of way to a pedestrian who is lawfully within a crosswalk is $250, but those fines must be issued by police. The same penalty applies to motorists who pass a vehicle that stops to allow pedestrians to cross.
The Board of Representatives’ Steering Committee Monday night was to set dates for the public hearings on the fee and fine increases. After hearing citizens’ comments, representatives will vote on the proposals at their Jan. 7 meeting.