From City of Fredericksburg
At its August 8 meeting, the Fredericksburg City Council accepted the Parking Action Plan recently submitted to the City by Walker Parking Consultants and endorsed the City staff’s recommended short-term (remainder of 2017) and mid-term (first half of 2018) strategy for implementation of recommendations contained in the Plan.
City staff has begun active implementation of the Plan. The earliest actions involve changes to parking restrictions on several downtown streets, including the restoration of two hour parking in the William Street corridor (500 and 600 blocks), modifications to the parking policies in the vicinity of the Farmers’ Market adjacent to Hurkamp Park and conversion of on-street parking spaces that have been reserved for the use of adjacent properties back to general use parking. One of the most noticeable of the actions to be taken in the short term in the Historic Downtown is the lengthening of the two hour parking restrictions on many streets. In those areas where the two hour parking is in place, the restriction will now be in effect Monday through Saturday, 8:00am-7:00pm.
All of these changes reflect recommendations in the Parking Action Plan. A Parking Task Force, appointed last fall by City Council, and City staff worked with the parking consultant to develop the Plan and refine the consultant’s recommendations. The consultant’s work was funded jointly by the City, the Economic Development Authority and the University of Mary Washington.
Participation in the Plan by UMW permitted parking policies and practices in the College Heights and College Terrace neighborhoods adjacent to the main UMW campus to also be evaluated and recommendations developed for improving the efficiency of on-street parking in those
neighborhoods. Recommendations the City will be pursuing include the elimination of the “No UMW Student Parking” signs on public streets concurrent with expansion of resident permit parking zones in the neighborhoods near the UMW campus, along with establishing two hour parking on the east (campus) side of certain blocks of College Avenue.
Additional actions to be taken to implement the recommendations contained in the Plan
include utilization of parking “apps” to provide those travelling to the Historic Downtown with information on the location of public parking, reviewing parking requirements for the development or redevelopment of properties in the downtown commercial district and initiating planning for implementation of paid on-street parking (with a target date of implementing paid parking by October 1, 2018.)
