Downtown Harrisonburg Parking Study

The City of Harrisonburg is wrapping up a study of Downtown Parking and wants your input for a brief survey by the end of Friday, February 7. We ask you to think hard about your response to the survey and hope you will consider the impact parking has on walkable and bikeable communities.

The City of Harrisonburg held Downtown Parking Public Forums on Wednesday, January 22, 2020 – The City of Harrisonburg presented potential changes to parking in the downtown area. You can view the meeting materials below

•  Meeting Displays

• Meeting Presentation

Please let the City of Harrisonburg know that you DO NOT support requiring new development to REQUIRE parking in Harrisonburg’s downtown core.

9 Recommendations from the Consultant and described fully in the above “Meeting Presentation”

1. Revise code to assure adequate parking for new development.
   1. We have BIG concerns about this recommendation and feel that requiring businesses to provide parking would be detrimental to our community vision for more walkable and bikeable communities.
2. Improve current facility maintenance and management practices.
3. Invest in wayfinding technology systems to help locate open parking.
4. Introduce new public parking capacity.
5. Promote shared parking to maximize the use of existing assets.
   1. We believe this is one of the most important recommendations given that there is an abundance of physical parking spaces in Downtown Harrisonburg. If the City could act as a broker to free up the use of vacant private spaces we could solve many of our parking “problems.”
6. Simplify parking time limits.
7. Invest in new technologies to improve operation.
8. Support the use of alternative modes of transportation.
   1. Of course, we are big believers in this recommendation though we don’t think that there is anything “alternative” about it. We prefer to call it human-scale transportation. How about we start with improving and increasing the volume of bicycle parking in Downtown Harrisonburg?
9. Investigate fee-for-use (e.g. “paid” parking) as a mechanism for influencing behavior.