The city of College Station is considering having a paid parking pilot program this June for the weekends of the Mexico-Brazil soccer game on June 8 and the George Strait concert on June 15.
The pilot program was discussed during the College Station City Council’s workshop agenda Thursday, so action was taken.
The city has identified 1,624 parking spaces in the Southside Historic District that are currently free street parking. Another 1,171 spots have been identified to be used in surface lots at City Hall, the Lincoln Center, the Wayne Smith baseball fields, and Post Oak Mall. The Wayne Smith lot would be available for RVs.
Debbie Eller, the city’s director of community services who presented information to the council, said the city is in discussion with Texas A&M University on a possible shuttle service to and from Post Oak Mall.
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City staff recommended charging $25 per vehicle. Eller said this would be in line with A&M’s plan to charge between $20 to $45 for on-campus parking for those events. City staff is working with its Northgate parking contractor, ParkMobile, to implement the remote-paid parking system. ParkMobile would provide special event zones. Customers would scan a QR code on temporary signage to pay for parking. The city would pay around 6% of its profits to ParkMobile for a credit card transaction fee.
This pilot program would address on-street parking congestion in residential neighborhoods during major events and generate revenue to help recover the city’s operational cost during event day and game days, according to city staff. If all spaces were filled, the city could make over $65,000 from the paid parking program. City Manager Bryan Woods told councilors this revenue would go to the city’s general fund.
“I think part of the reason we’ve looked at it is if you look all over and you look at other games, they charge this parking and people pay it,” Woods said.
City staff noted this program will not create additional on-street parking and only applies to publicly owned rights-of-way. Eller said the city’s code enforcement team would be in the area enforcing safety and keeping track of paid parking.
Eller said city staff selected areas based on the history of parking on game days and walkability to Kyle Field for the events. Game day goers often park throughout the Southside neighborhood for free for Texas A&M home football games.
Woods said these events will be different in nature from each other and A&M home football games and is one reason the city looked at this opportunity. He added A&M will also be out of a normal semester, which means there should be more on-campus parking available compared to home football games in the fall.
“Even though we are, I would say, as good as moving massive amounts of people in and out of our city than any city in the nation, this will be a different way that this goes down and will give us a mechanism potentially to use in the future,” Woods said. “Even though [A&M football] might not have Alabama, we still have Notre Dame and we still have Texas coming this year. We’re going to have some big games, which will be great.”
Councilman Dennis Maloney said he is intrigued to see how this pilot program works and if it is cost-effective.
“I would give it a shot for the soccer [game] and George Strait [concert] and then get the feedback and see how it works out because we’re going to have a lot more people coming in here than ever before back-to-back like that, football weekends notwithstanding,” Maloney said.
Councilwoman Linda Harvell, who lives in the Southside neighborhood, said she hopes the city will reach out to residents in listed areas. Eller said they have a walk-and-talk plan.
“I just hope we would reach out to our residents and get their input,” Harvell said.
College Station Mayor John Nichols echoed Harvell’s comments and said residents in these proposed neighborhoods will have to manage their own vehicles in a different way and urged for communication to be made with them.
“They’ve never had to pay to park on the street in the past and they’re used to it,” Nichols said. “Well, now they’re going to have to park in their driveways and make their adjustments. So, the importance of reaching out and making clear instructions and information to all the property owners along all of those [streets] is critical.”