Overnight parking restrictions or elimination?

4,694 Views | 44 Replies | Last: 2 mo ago by threecatcorner
threecatcorner
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I saw a sign up on Southwest Parkway (not at its intersection with the street I live on, but close enough that it might include my street) saying there's going to be a meeting on September 30 about overnight parking. I think I saw that general topic mentioned somewhere else (probably KBTX). I think they are talking about getting rid of overnight parking on some CS streets. I do find it somewhat annoying when the entire street is taken up by people parking, but I think it will be worse if people are suddenly not able to park where they live or to ever visit someone who lives on one of these streets. Anyone know what they mean by "overnight"? What time would people have to leave at night to not get ticketed? How early could someone come over in the morning and not get mistaken for someone who'd spent the night? Will they give parking permits (stickers or hang tags) to people who live on the affected streets so they can park there and/or can have one guest or something? Also, is this basically because the state is doing away with College Station's restrictions on how many unrelated people can live together?

Depending on the size of the vehicles, most driveways only fit one car or truck (two if they're small) so a lot of people who have 2 vehicles (and could be a married couple, not necessarily college roommates) park one car/truck on the curb. It would also be nice if people could have a friend visit and not get towed.

When my parents visit, they get a hotel, but depending on how early overnight parking starts, that might mean they couldn't come over and hang out for a while after dinner before going to their hotel.

Will there be more opportunity to talk/complain before the city starts yanking parking away? I know there are some other streets that had parking totally removed. Blocking overnight parking isn't as bad, but o still think that people might not be thinking it all the way through. At least the people who live somewhere ought to be able to park in front of their residence and not need to suddenly get rid of one vehicle if they have two or find somewhere else (like where?) to store one at night.
doubledog
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I propose parking on one side of all residential streets and restrictions on parking distances to driveways and mail box access. While we are at it restrictions on basketball courts on public streets (this is a safety issue).

Finally, the city can hire interns (part time workers) to enforce existing and future parking laws.

Jinx
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While I don't have strong feeling on the topic itself, this seems somewhat targeted towards those houses with a bunch of college kids living in them. I have been through those streets and parking can absolutely be a mess to squeeze through sometimes, especially when there are large gatherings. If I recall correctly, it's mostly the Eastgate area.
GoSummer
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I was looking for more information about this because I'm not sure if I will be able to attend the meeting next week. I found a couple of news articles and one says they are proposing no street parking from 2:00am- 5:00 am. This does seem to be targeting students. I'm not sure what problem this is solving as the hours are only when most people are sleeping. I have a couple of concerns. Are residents given some sort of way to allow them to have overnight guests (i.e. family visiting from out of town, etc)? My other concern is that this will unintentionally discourage students from using Uber or designated drivers and being able to leave their car at a friends house. Or being able to just sleep on a friend's couch if they need to.

Here are the news articles I found -

https://wtaw.com/college-station-city-council-majority-is-interested-in-parking-restrictions-as-one-way-to-address-housing-overoccupancy/#:~:text=Thursday's%20(April%2025)%20College%20Station%20city%20council,council%20was%20given%20a%20list%20of%20other

https://www.kxxv.com/news/local-news/in-your-neighborhood/college-station-considers-parking-restrictions-near-texas-a-m-campus#:~:text=College%20Station%20City%20Council%20is%20considering%20adding,move%20that%20has%20some%20longtime%20residents%20concerned.
kraut
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AG
From the city's website:

Overnight Parking Limitations

Potential Overnight Parking Limitations
The City of College Station wants your input on potential overnight parking removal in the Eastgate and Southside areas. This initiative aims to address excess parking in areas with unplanned over-occupancy or where the infrastructure was not designed to accommodate the density.

Public Meeting
Join us for a public meeting to discuss the potential overnight parking removal and provide your feedback:
Date: Tuesday, September 30th
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Location: City Hall Council Chambers
A short presentation by staff will be followed by breakout stations to answer specific questions related to location, current parking regulations, and enforcement.

Digital Survey
A digital survey will be available after the presentation to record additional feedback. The survey will remain open for one week following the meeting:
Survey opens: at 6:00 p.m. on September 30th
Survey closes: October 6th


Maps from the website:



AggiePhil
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AG
This is part of the whole ROO/HOO removal saga. It's one piece of a much larger story that can be read about elsewhere in painful detail.
EriktheRed
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AG
AggiePhil said:

This is part of the whole ROO/HOO removal saga. It's one piece of a much larger story that can be read about elsewhere in painful detail.

Yes. After the State told CS they can no longer restrict occupancy based on the # of unrelated people living somewhere, the city is now going to try to limit the # of people that can live at a residence based on other things that they can control. They can control parking on grass, and % of lot that is paved, and parking on the street. So this is just one piece of "occupancy restriction" attempts in neighborhoods near the university.
maroon barchetta
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It seems like a way to get around the fact that they can't limit how many unrelated people live in a house. This will be their attempt to cut that limb from the other side.

There are some Ag Shacks back on the east side off of Eisenhower that have room for cars in the driveway or the back but the renters park in the street.

Eisenhower at least has signs now restricting people to parking on one side of the street instead of two. But the side streets are so crammed I don't know if a fire truck could make it down the middle.

HOWEVER…

The problem this new plan won't address is the off campus or commuter students that don't have a parking permit for campus, so they park in a neighborhood that has bus stops and go from there, or they scooter from there.

Those apartments off of Lincoln back past Nimitz have a lot of day parkers. The city will have to be creative with that issue. Getting an emergency vehicle down there would be challenging.
AggiePhil
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AG
EriktheRed said:

AggiePhil said:

This is part of the whole ROO/HOO removal saga. It's one piece of a much larger story that can be read about elsewhere in painful detail.

After the State told CS they can no longer restrict occupancy based on the # of unrelated people living somewhere, the city is now going to try to limit the # of people that can live at a residence based on other things that they can control.

Correct. The citizens asked for this. "Address the symptoms of overoccupancy, not overoccupancy itself." Parking congestion is one of these symptoms.
Stucco
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This is to curb the ag shack development until there is sufficient student housing.
TXCityGirl
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Allowing parking on only one side of the street makes the most sense. Especially on trash pickup days, it's an obstacle course to drive down some streets. We should be more concerned about safety and allowing the city staff to work efficiently. Parking on one side only also allows for safe passage of emergency vehicles which should be a priority.
lwd78
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AG
Stucco said:

This is to curb the ag shack development until there is sufficient student housing.

The University screwed the city, royally, until President Welsh came in and decided that we needed more dorms. That effort may now be lost. The last dorm built was Hullabaloo in 2013. It is ranked, on A&M site, as "$$$$", which is the highest rating cost-wise. How many "beds" did it add? 0. Actually, it was a negative number, as more dorm beds were torn down than were added. Before that, A&M added dorms in 1989. Main campus enrollment was less than half of what it is today.
I know some of President Welsh's actions were controversial, but I found him to be honest, and a sting in A&M's best wishes. I think we will suffer from the loss.
woodiewood1
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lwd78 said:

Stucco said:

This is to curb the ag shack development until there is sufficient student housing.

The University screwed the city, royally, until President Welsh came in and decided that we needed more dorms. That effort may now be lost. The last dorm built was Hullabaloo in 2013. It is ranked, on A&M site, as "$$$$", which is the highest rating cost-wise. How many "beds" did it add? 0. Actually, it was a negative number, as more dorm beds were torn down than were added. Before that, A&M added dorms in 1989. Main campus enrollment was less than half of what it is today.
I know some of President Welsh's actions were controversial, but I found him to be honest, and a sting in A&M's best wishes. I think we will suffer from the loss.

The key to having sufficient beds on campus is to limit and even lower the enrollment of the university,
txgardengirl
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Did the city consult with the legislature on making those maps? It makes little sense other than targeting rental properties - those that are most likely to use off street parking to leave for work at odd times and not be blocked in.

Safety issue? Remove one side of the street

We ALL pay for the maintenance on these streets!
BCS-Ag
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The correct answer is limiting parking to one side of the street and or allowing the neighborhood to have a voice in how or whether to restrict parking. This is a direct result of the city's overreach in their limiting the number of unrelated individuals to live in a house, they kind of brought this on themselves...

Additionally, in today's day of uber and electric scooters, cars for students are becoming less important. This is a stupid game of whack-a-mole In a growing college town.
GoSummer
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Parking allowed on one side of the street makes a lot of sense and addresses the problem of street congestion. But it looks like the city is not actually worried about that problem. Banning parking from 2 am- 5 am does nothing to solve the actual problem.

The city already requires any new build or remodel to include a paved parking space for each bedroom. Students are not interested in sharing bedrooms. They really prefer their own bathrooms too. I know some of you don't believe this and think that they are going to start cramming roommates in together, but it's just not true.

You may see more cars on these neighborhood streets, especially on weekends because it is common to meet up somewhere and then Uber or use designated drivers to get home. Is this really something we want to discourage?
CS78
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Really surprised to see the state streets included. I have a property there and street parking has never been a problem. I have the exact number of off-street spots as I have tenants' cars. But it seems like a load of poop to try to tell them that they can never have a guest spend the night. When parking isnt a problem!

This is nothing more than a continuation of more CSTX.gov government overreach.

And I can tell you that I fully expect selective enforcement in the state streets. Ive owned properties in the state streets for almost 20 years. Some people get away with serious code violations there. Theyll enforce the parking on what they think to be students but turn a blind eye to enforcing it on the long-term residents. Ive already seen it too many times.
doubledog
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GoSummer said:

Parking allowed on one side of the street makes a lot of sense and addresses the problem of street congestion. But it looks like the city is not actually worried about that problem. Banning parking from 2 am- 5 am does nothing to solve the actual problem.

The city already requires any new build or remodel to include a paved parking space for each bedroom. Students are not interested in sharing bedrooms. They really prefer their own bathrooms too. I know some of you don't believe this and think that they are going to start cramming roommates in together, but it's just not true.

You may see more cars on these neighborhood streets, especially on weekends because it is common to meet up somewhere and then Uber or use designated drivers to get home. Is this really something we want to discourage?

Foster street (in CoCS) is the poster child for Aggie Shacks. The street has no parking any time for its entire length. What you see it that many Aggie Shack parking lots(?) are overcrowded, with one or even two cars double parked, even on weekdays. If someone checked, I would think that the two (or more) person/room is common.

GoSummer
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doubledog said:

GoSummer said:

Parking allowed on one side of the street makes a lot of sense and addresses the problem of street congestion. But it looks like the city is not actually worried about that problem. Banning parking from 2 am- 5 am does nothing to solve the actual problem.

The city already requires any new build or remodel to include a paved parking space for each bedroom. Students are not interested in sharing bedrooms. They really prefer their own bathrooms too. I know some of you don't believe this and think that they are going to start cramming roommates in together, but it's just not true.

You may see more cars on these neighborhood streets, especially on weekends because it is common to meet up somewhere and then Uber or use designated drivers to get home. Is this really something we want to discourage?

Foster street (in CoCS) is the poster child for Aggie Shacks. The street has no parking any time for its entire length. What you see it that many Aggie Shack parking lots(?) are overcrowded, with one or even two cars double parked, even on weekdays. If someone checked, I would think that the two (or more) person/room is common.




Just because they are parked there, does not mean they live there. They park and take their scooter to campus. They meet at a friends' house and take an Uber or Fetii out at night and come back for cars the next day, etc.

Smeghead4761
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Alternative solution: permitted parking on streets that are overcrowded with parked cars, with each address/lot receiving a set number of permits, either a fixed number or determined by the street frontage width of the lot.

I went to a different school, in another state, for undergrad, and the residential streets around campus, maybe a 1/4 mile distance, all had permitted parking. 2 permits per address or lot. (If 123 Elm Street turned their detached garage into 123A Elm Street to rent it out, they didn't get additional permits.) This kept the students from using the streets as free day time parking, and rented houses with large numbers of occupants couldn't clog the streets with cars.
doubledog
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GoSummer said:

doubledog said:

GoSummer said:

Parking allowed on one side of the street makes a lot of sense and addresses the problem of street congestion. But it looks like the city is not actually worried about that problem. Banning parking from 2 am- 5 am does nothing to solve the actual problem.

The city already requires any new build or remodel to include a paved parking space for each bedroom. Students are not interested in sharing bedrooms. They really prefer their own bathrooms too. I know some of you don't believe this and think that they are going to start cramming roommates in together, but it's just not true.

You may see more cars on these neighborhood streets, especially on weekends because it is common to meet up somewhere and then Uber or use designated drivers to get home. Is this really something we want to discourage?

Foster street (in CoCS) is the poster child for Aggie Shacks. The street has no parking any time for its entire length. What you see it that many Aggie Shack parking lots(?) are overcrowded, with one or even two cars double parked, even on weekdays. If someone checked, I would think that the two (or more) person/room is common.




Just because they are parked there, does not mean they live there. They park and take their scooter to campus. They meet at a friends' house and take an Uber or Fetii out at night and come back for cars the next day, etc.



Drive down Foster at 6:00am, you see the same thing.
CS78
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Not a bad idea. Except the current situation has nothing to do with fixing a parking problem. There is no late night problem. This is only about punishing the people that actually live there.
Bob Yancy
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One of the reasons we have overoccupancy is because we choked our housing market with excessive fees and processes. It's not the only reason, but a big one. Easy to fix with political will, albeit won't happen overnight.

Somewhere along the line we convinced ourselves we could control growth, but all you can really do is deflect it outside the city limits. That means more traffic as housing is built in neighboring jurisdictions, keeping more cars on the road longer and over greater distances to get to and from where folks are going. Housing scarcity in the city ensues, driving CS residents' home values and thus property taxes higher and higher.

While college kids and their parents look for ever more creative ways to obtain housing, and that throws gasoline on the fire of rent by the bedroom, et al. The young and working class and relocating retired struggle to make it in CS as the legacy residents hang in there.

We turned a blind eye to it and by the time we realized what we did to ourselves, it was too late and the genie was out of the bottle.

Housing, economic development (jobs), entertainment tourism and healthcare are the issues of our time.

Good policy can fix it all.

Respectfully

Yancy '95
GoSummer
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doubledog said:

GoSummer said:

doubledog said:

GoSummer said:

Parking allowed on one side of the street makes a lot of sense and addresses the problem of street congestion. But it looks like the city is not actually worried about that problem. Banning parking from 2 am- 5 am does nothing to solve the actual problem.

The city already requires any new build or remodel to include a paved parking space for each bedroom. Students are not interested in sharing bedrooms. They really prefer their own bathrooms too. I know some of you don't believe this and think that they are going to start cramming roommates in together, but it's just not true.

You may see more cars on these neighborhood streets, especially on weekends because it is common to meet up somewhere and then Uber or use designated drivers to get home. Is this really something we want to discourage?

Foster street (in CoCS) is the poster child for Aggie Shacks. The street has no parking any time for its entire length. What you see it that many Aggie Shack parking lots(?) are overcrowded, with one or even two cars double parked, even on weekdays. If someone checked, I would think that the two (or more) person/room is common.




Just because they are parked there, does not mean they live there. They park and take their scooter to campus. They meet at a friends' house and take an Uber or Fetii out at night and come back for cars the next day, etc.



Drive down Foster at 6:00am, you see the same thing.

Yes, the cars would be there at 6:00 am if they took a safe ride home the night before.

I'm not saying there isn't a problem. Maybe Foster needs to have parking permits or limited parking to one side of the street. It's just the restriction only being from 2:00-5:00 am that worries me. Students will be more worried about their car getting towed than about getting a safe ride home. I personally know many students that do this. The organizations have a system for underclassmen being designated drivers. They also use Uber and Fetii.
Smeghead4761
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Oh, I agree. The city's proposal is all about the city trying to find a way to replace the unrelated persons rental restriction that the Legislature took away. Thus the 2-5am enforcement period.

If it was meant to deal with students parking and walking to campus, the restricted period would be 8am-6pm, or thereabouts.
woodiewood1
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Across the city the only main concern on parking should be to make parking 24/7 only on one side of each street to allow emergency fire truck vehicles to have a wide-berth through the street. Where an older street is narrow, parking should be prohibited on both sides. Other than that, there should be few restrictions,

Fire trucks should not have to do a slow weave back and forth around parked vehicles.

threecatcorner
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I agree with the posters who've said that having the restrictions from 2 to 5 a.m. could result in encouraging drunk driving because when the bars close (2 a.m.), their car can't be at their friend's house so they can't get a safe ride home and come back for it later or just crash on their friend's couch for the night and sleep it off. There are definitely people who will just chance driving like that instead so they can get their car out of the towing area.

Those maps make no sense. What they are calling Southside and Eastgate (why don't those match? Why Southside instead of Southgate like the rest of the directions away from the university campus?) extend further away from campus than they should and the edges are jagged, zigzagging so that some streets go all the way to Southwest Parkway (not "Southside" as far as I'm concerned) and others don't go down that far. Some (such as Lawyer and Trinity) don't even split at actual blocks. I think that at least part of the spaces that are left out are schools and city facilities (such as South Knoll Elementary and the Lincoln Rec Center). That reminds me I should look at the map closer. Did anyone notice if the street on the front of South Knoll (I think that part is called Boswell; I think that the part on the other side of Lawyer Street is called Caudill) is included? People definitely park there (sometimes people who live there and sometimes parents of kids who go to that school, although the school traffic obviously isn't in the middle of the night).

If the city wants to restrict parking based on actual safety, that's one thing, but that really isn't what this is. The city already came through here (not sure if it's the same area they are currently referring to as Southside or not, but at least the neighborhood near South Knoll Elementary; I'm not sure the size of the area that they studied) several years ago (more than 10, less than 20) and studied the parking and traffic. They had emergency vehicles (I'd guess firetrucks but not sure) go through and say which areas were dangerous. They made some changes based on that (for instance, there is a curve on Lawyer Street that was considered too tight or something so they eliminated parking completely on that one specific area of the street. Even though the rest of the street can be a little tight when people park up and down both sides, that's the only section that the fire department and/or police department thought actually needed parking restrictions or elimination for safety purposes.

Who is going to enforce the 2-5 a.m. parking ban? Are they going to hire a bunch of code enforcement officers to go around those areas in the middle of the night?

I like the idea of having parking tags for people who live on the affected streets. I don't know how that goes if you have someone stay overnight (someone local or an out-of-town guest), but there should at least be options for residents themselves.

Part of the reasons people park on the streets is that more people have cars than when most of the houses in these neighborhoods were designed. Even if it's a single family, a lot of people have a car for each person who's 16 or older, and they don't all have room. The post got deleted from the person who said we should all just clean out our garages and have somewhere to park, but they're not wrong that hardly anyone uses their garage to park their car, so that's one spot eliminated that the people designing the houses assumed would be used to store a car, so it contributes to the lack of parking and the number of cars that are parked on the curb.

What happens on streets where parking is eliminated from almost the whole street but a block (or part of a block for some insane reason) doesn't have parking restrictions? Is everyone from the entire street and surrounding streets going to try to park on the curb for that small stretch of road?

I think that the city is going to get into unintended consequences again. They try to solve one problem and will wind up creating more (almost certainly including an increase in drunk driving during those exact hours).
AggiePhil
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AG
Anyone know if the meeting is being streamed?
Smeghead4761
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Did anyone go to the meeting? How well did the KBTX story capture what went on?

I noticed that that the one resident they interviewed talked specifically about resident parking permits.

(Disclosure: I live in the county, and thus have no dog in this fight. I just find the discussion, as well as the process of how local government goes about dealing with problems, interesting.)
legalbird
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Curious why there is a map? If an issue, why not regulate all of College Station?

What about freeing up the streets in Northgate? So many streets have been blocked off and given to the commercial builders for their projects.
Omperlodge
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If you want to pay for the streets in front of your home and take it out of the city budget, we can discuss parking tags. Until then, everyone has the same right to park in the area regardless of their residence.
Bob Yancy
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For me this is a tough public policy challenge. It involves public safety, property rights and neighborhood integrity. No matter what we decide, at least one of those will take a hit.

I worry about a fire engine being able to navigate our streets. I worry about the small business person that has a third work van or truck. I worry about the residents that live in the affected area watching their neighborhood change before their eyes.

I encourage anyone with constructive feedback to post here or send me an email at byancy@cstx.gov

I'll be looking closely at the survey results as they come in. It was a packed house last night.

Respectfully

Yancy '95
powerbelly
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AG
I am always amazed that people living in a college town seems to hate everything that comes with that.
Bob Yancy
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powerbelly said:

I am always amazed that people living in a college town seems to hate everything that comes with that.


Just asking- not picking an argument- but do you live in a neighborhood with a character that is morphing with each passing year? Or one that is essentially the same today as it always has been?

Inquisitively and respectfully

Yancy '95
powerbelly
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AG
Bob Yancy said:

powerbelly said:

I am always amazed that people living in a college town seems to hate everything that comes with that.


Just asking- not picking an argument- but do you live in a neighborhood with a character that is morphing with each passing year? Or one that is essentially the same today as it always has been?

Inquisitively and respectfully

Yancy '95

One that changes every few years as people move. Especially the last 10 years there has been a huge shift.
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