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Fears that 49ers’ games at the new Levi’s Stadium would create a Mountain View parking nightmare turned out to be little more than a bugaboo, city officials acknowledged. Nevertheless, city leaders showed support for giving one more year to a pilot program meant to tightly regulate downtown parking on game days through dashboard permits and new fees.
In a 6-1 vote, the Mountain View City Council approved spending an additional $28,000 to enforce a scaled-back program of fees and three-hour time limits for motorists parking downtown during large events.
Last year, city officials predicted they would have 500 to 600 drivers leaving their vehicles in Mountain View to take light rail south to the 49ers’ new stadium. To be ready for sea of cars, the city launched a $75,000 pilot program to institute a three-hour time limit for street parking in areas near the train station.
As part of the effort, the city relocated the Farmers’ Market from the Castro Street Caltrain parking lot to a different lot about four blocks south. On game days, drivers were charged $10 to park for the day at four downtown parking lots.
Last week, city staff reported that the number of drivers leaving their cars in Mountain View fell far short of their original projections. On average, just over 100 drivers were paying to park in Mountain View. Three extra police officials were assigned to enforce parking rules on game days, resulting in a total of 290 parking citations, according to police reports. But parking complaints were relatively minimal from businesses and nearby residents, and police officials pointed out they heard of no problems on three occasions when they decided to pull their extra staffing off parking enforcement.
Some in attendance last week described the parking program as a waste. Former City Council candidate Jim Neal pointed out that his neighbors were fearful of getting ticketed despite the city’s parking permits for residents.
“This program is a humongous waste of time and resources. City staff could be doing a lot more productive things than worrying about who parks and where,” he said. “Don’t waste all these resources for something that really isn’t necessary.”
Others disputed that viewpoint. One resident spoke to request the city to expand the area where parking would be restricted to include her neighborhood near Central Expressway.
City staff proposed shrinking the restricted parking area to just the immediate blocks near the Castro Street Caltrain Station, but they recommended continuing the pilot program one more year to provide more time to gauge the parking demands. Going forward, only one city parking lot at Hope and Dana streets would be needed for paid parking, staff recommended.
But city staff noted that all bets were off on how Mountain View would be impacted next year when the Levi’s Stadium hosted the Super Bowl. The city would take up plans to handle traffic on that specific game day at a future meeting, they promised.
Most council members were amenable to extending the parking program one more year even as they explained why it was needed in the first place.
“It was a pilot program we probably would have gotten more wrath from the neighbors if we didn’t do it,” reasoned Mayor John McAlister.
The lone dissenter, Councilman John Inks criticized the 2,200 hours logged in staff time needed to implement the parking program.
“The first year’s results are very underwhelming. I don’t see how we can support the funding cost for downtown parking,” he said. “I have to ask at this point why we have to continue the program instead of just going back to signage.”
I’ve noticed the prohibitive signs regarding Levi Stadium game days yet have noticed almost no impact on parking in my neighborhood.
I suspect you could simply abandon the program and it wouldn’t make much (if any) difference. What we really need more of is parking for Caltrain folks.
Yep, the parking rules do a great job at keeping me out of town and allowing me to spend my money elsewhere… I hope the city council enjoys their town of paid parking and empty businesses… I guess it will not be so bad for me once I can no longer drive to downtown because of the dim-witted El Camino bus lane plan… Oh well, Viva La Sunnyvale….
Many years ago, the MV Planning and City Council stupidly decided that they wanted MV to be the premier transportation hub of Northern SC County. This was, at best, a pyrrhic “victory”, one that we’re paying for today with downtown parking and traffic problems. In their incredibly ignorant assumption that people actually would want to use slow and inconvenient public transport like light rail, our “wise” city planners forgot to make sure that there was enough parking infrastructure near Evelyn and Castro to support their wet dreams. This shell game worked as long as Light Rail was a total commuting disaster, but now that Google shuttles clog downtown and 49ers fans ride the previously failed light rail system on game days and nights, suddenly there aren’t nearly enough parking spaces, either at the transit center or in nearby Old Mountian View, where we live. As the old saying goes “You’d better watch out what you wish for because it might just come true!” I don’t expect the present pack of liberal idiots on the MV city council to understand a word that I’ve said. What a shame for MV.
It’s a shame that so much focus and funding is for caltrain which mostly helps white rich people while busses help mostly everybody else. It’s not fair!
@George – I really don’t know where you’re coming from on this one. I ride Caltrain every day and it is hardly used mostly by ‘Rich white people’. There are people of all races on the train and I would argue that very few of them are rich. The majority during rush hour are middle class working people, and during off-peak hours there are probably more low income people. The trains are also very heavily used by cyclists (when was the last time you saw a broker for Morgan Stanley or Charles Schwab riding a bike?). I suspect that your comments may be to inject class warfare/racism into the controversy over the dedicated BRT lanes, or you may simply be uninformed.
Caltrain, while having it’s own problems, at least is doing things to improve service without (so far) doing anything to totally disrupt traffic flow through Santa Clara county. Also, unlike the VTA’s 22,522 routes, Caltrains are full to overflowing many times during rush hour and as of Monday will be adding a 6th car to their trains (again without impacting traffic flow).
Also, I have noticed that the vast majority of personal attacks and aspersion casting has come from the Pro-Dedicated lane side. Why is that?
Jim Neal
Old Mountain View
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