Town: Mostly Positive Feedback on Change to Paid Parking on Elm

Town officials say last month’s switchover to paid parking on Elm Street downtown has gone as smoothly as could be expected, with several compliments on the change as well as some frustrations and complaints.

The Parking Bureau at Town Hall is getting “a lot of positive feedback with people coming into the office or calling saying that this was a good program, a good initiative that we started,” according to Parking Manager Stacy Miltenberg.

“We are seeing space availability, we are seeing movement on Elm Street, and turnover,” she said during the Nov. 5 regular meeting of the Parking Commission, held at Town Hall and via videoconference. “So the initiative is accomplishing what the goal was. We are seeing more spaces available on Elm.”

A long-contemplated idea in New Canaan’s efforts to improve traffic flow in the business district, and long backed by the town’s highest elected official, the change to paid parking on Elm Street and part of South Avenue came with other changes, including: all-free three-hour spaces in the Park Street Lot, newly designated 15-minute spaces along Park Street itself (rather than two hours) and—coming soon—a new access ramp behind the Playhouse Lot that’s expected to help move delivery trucks off of Elm, among other benefits.

The town’s parking enforcement officers continue to come across locals and other downtown visitors who “were not aware that we changed it over,” Miltenberg said.

“We are issuing warning tickets for first offenders just to educate them,” she said. “We can see if there’s somebody that has been issued a warning ticket and again they parked on Elm and didn’t pay for their space, they will get a regular ticket because they have been warned that they now have to pay on Elm Street. For the most part, everything is working well.”

Miltenberg added that some of the new parking machines have seen glitches, though about six weeks into the change the data shows that “there are a lot of people that are paying on Elm Street and South Avenue.”

“So people are getting used to it,” she said.

Tucker Murphy, administrative officer in the first selectman’s office, detailed the town’s ongoing communications plan, which has included a meeting hosted with merchants at The Playhouse, walking around with brochures about the parking change that includes a map of the downtown, posting bulletins on the town website and through the first selectman’s office, meeting with realtors, sending press releases to media and hosting meetings at Lapham Center and Staying Put in New Canaan.

“So we are trying to get to everyone,” Murphy said. “We know some are not getting messages or hearing about this. I am personally aware of commentary on Facebook and seeing complaints and I’ve been trying to keep a list of what the key complaints are.”

They include: fees charged by parking apps that motorists may use to pay for parking (they can use the kiosks instead), lack of a QR Code posted to ease payment (they can be manipulated by thieves posting stickers on top of them) and parking apps’ requests for location services.

Murphy said the open spaces that can be seen up and down Elm Street now during the day likely indicate that those spaces had been used in the past by people working in shops and restaurants downtown—an issue that the town has tried for years to resolve, including with special free permits for the Center School and Locust Avenue Lots for business owners to distribute to their workers.

Commissioners asked Murphy and Miltenberg whether the town is seeing less double-parking (that’s a new focus for enforcement now, including for police when the Parking Bureau’s officers’ shifts finish), why the screens on the kiosks don’t say that parking enforcement is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday so people know it’s free on Sunday (it’s supposed to say that, not ‘9-5 daily’ and has since been updated), whether it’s possible for the kiosks to have a “splash screen” on Sundays saying that all parking is free (it’s possible and should be part of the ongoing discussion), whether the Parking Bureau’s below-normal staffing level would be ongoing (no) and whether people with disabled placards must pay (yes).

Commissioner Katie O’Neill said that she’s seen a problem of double-parking regularly outside a specific business on Elm Street.

“Barvida has more double-parkers than anyone else on Elm Street,” she said. “And I also see Uber drivers there from time to time, but what they will also do is pull into the alley, which is a private property and not the greatest ingress and egress for people to be overusing now, because of the sidewalk and it’s hard to see around it.”

Murphy said that she has seen the issue, too, and that enforcement would increase once the Parking Bureau was back on its regular staffing level. She added that the town has already spoken to police about helping with enforcement in the area, such as the illegal Park Street “pull-off” onto the sidewalk in front of Starbucks.

O’Neill said she would like to see a focus on increasing the number of short-term spaces, such as those on Park Street that see a healthy and high rate of turnover.

“Tucker, I’m sure you saw on [New Canaan] Moms [Facebook] page a post where someone said they’re less likely to go to town, and a lot of comments under that were ‘same,’ and that was distressing,” O’Neill said. “So that is hard for a merchant to see.”

Murphy said the town is getting through an initial change and will look at it again “once we’ve been through this for a bit.”