PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Portland City Council approved an event parking district in the Lloyd neighborhood on Wednesday.
The Portland Bureau of Transportation is planning to charge $3 an hour for parking during events that draw more than 10,000 visitors to the area.
An event parking district would implement higher costs for parking on around 90 days a year when it’s a high traffic area, such as Blazers games and conventions that come to the neighborhood.
Go Lloyd is a transportation management association in the Lloyd neighborhood — all their work is based in transportation to promote economic development through transportation based programs. They are advocates of transit which gets more people to the Lloyd District with fewer vehicles.
“It’s not going to fix everything right away, but I think it’s one of those things that’s going to create some sort of gradual change,” said Owen Ronchelli, Executive Director of Go Lloyd.
Ronchelli is not the only supporter — Tony Jordan with the parking reform network says this program puts Portland more on par with other major cities across the country
“They’re postponing enforcement for a year to give people time to adjust and most importantly they’re taking the money raised from this and putting it into a program called the transportation wallet,” Jordan said.
What this wallet would do is provide low income residents in the neighborhood with credits to take other transit options to offset higher street parking costs in their neighborhood on days when event parking is activated. All this is an attempt to make travel to and through the Lloyd district less of a hassle.
Dylan Rivera, a spokesperson for PBOT, says this has been an answer to businesses and community members asking the city to do something about parking which as we all know can get a little congested around big events.
The event parking district where on downtown’s busiest days meter rates would increase in an attempt to curb an overflow of street parking.
“Folks are frustrated by the difficulty of finding a parking space on those 90 days a year where there’s a large scale event in the Moda Center area and it has an impact on the whole neighborhood really,” Rivera said.
He said Lloyd has tons of transit options such as ample bike lanes, sidewalks, bus stops — and they are poised to be successful with a program like this.
Rivera hopes this just urges people to use transit more.