Parkers Coming to New Town Center Will Be Directed By System Believed to Be One of a Kind in U.S. Downtowns
ROCKVILLE, Md., April 27, 2006—Rockville’s Mayor and Council on Monday night approved the purchase of a parking guidance system for three public garages in the new Rockville Town Center that will be among the nation’s most technologically advanced systems for municipal downtown parking. The system will be installed in all three garages that will support Phase I of Rockville’s revitalized downtown redevelopment, now under construction.
“Single-space monitoring and remote signs” included the most unique features among three options presented to the Mayor and Council. The system will cost approximately $802,000 for installation, plus an annual average of $51,700 for operating expenses over a 10-year period, for a total cost of $1,319,000. The City previously issued $35 million in 30-year bonds to pay for construction of the three garages. That amount included $750,000 in anticipation of the City adopting some type of parking guidance system.
Mayor Larry Giammo and Councilmembers Bob Dorsey, Phyllis Marcuccio and Anne Robbins voted to approve the parking system after a presentation by City staff that included information and opinions from nationally recognized Walker Parking Consultants of Wayne, Pa. Councilmember Susan Hoffmann was absent from the meeting due to a family matter.
Mayor Giammo said the parking system could help “brand” the City’s new downtown, helping it gain a reputation of having a parking system unmatched in the nation. He said availability and ease of parking often determines where people choose to shop and dine. “I think we could have a competitive advantage by drawing people to Rockville” with this system, he said.
The new system, which will affect a total of 973 spaces in the three garages, will include constantly updated signs placed at remote gateways to Rockville Town Center that inform drivers which garages have space available. Electronic signs also will be placed at the entrances of each garage to let drivers know which floors have open spaces. The most advanced feature of Rockville’s garages will be the single-spaced monitoring system. There will be a highly visible indicator above each space that signals whether that space is available, thereby helping drivers find available spaces quickly and efficiently.
Walker Parking said it could identify very few examples in the U.S. where single-space monitoring was being used. It could not identify any in a downtown municipal parking garage. Similar systems are currently in use at Thurgood Marshall BWI Airport near Baltimore and Jacksonville (Fla.) International Airport. Under construction is a private garage in Palm Beach, Fla., being built for the corporate use of a bank. Single-space monitoring systems are more common in Europe, said Walker Parking.
Some elements in Phase I of Rockville Town Center—which is being called “Rockville Town Square” by private developer RD Rockville, LLC—will open later this year. A grand opening for the development is scheduled for spring 2007. Rockville Town Square will include residential, retail, restaurant, entertainment, office and cultural uses. It also will be home to the new Rockville Library, which will be the largest in the Montgomery County system.
Rockville’s parking system will have additional elements that will make it stand apart from most. The Mayor and Council in March approved pursuing a system that would allow parkers to pay—either by cash, credit cards or “smart cards” charged in advance with monetary value—at centrally located multi-space pay stations in the garages. An additional customer convenience would have pay stations located around the Rockville Town Center area that are linked electronically to the stations in the garages. By knowing their space number, parkers will be able to add minutes from one of the remote stations without having to return to the garage where their car was located.
The Mayor and Council also previously approved having free parking on Saturdays and Sundays. A rate of $1 per hour will be charged for Town Center parking Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
It was hoped that the modern parking system approved Monday could partially or fully pay for itself simply by attracting more parkers to Rockville Town Center. A report to the Mayor and Council estimated that there would have to be an increase in parkers of 11.7 percent (1,535 per week) over baseline estimates for the City to break even financially with the selected guidance system.
Rockville will work with RD Garage, the corporate entity building the garages, and Whiting-Turner Construction, the company doing the construction, to design, procure and install the equipment for the parking systems.
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