The streets of Evanston | City of Evanston/Facebook
The streets of Evanston | City of Evanston/Facebook
Ashley Ore, a professional engineer, and Ben Sands, a veteran of planning parking facilities, worked with the city of Evanston on a parking study for the city.
The purpose of the study was to resolve the current challenges with parking in the city and plan out the parking in order to help facilitate growth in the city. The study began with an evaluation of the current parking facilities in the city.
"The point of the study was to give you a snapshot into what other progressive cities around the country are doing and provide general recommendations that can be further honed with additional occupancy data," said Ore, a Parking Engineer of WGI which works as a consultant to the city. "Ultimately, Evanston's parking assets are the first and last impressions that visitors have of your city, and they must be managed in a way that is efficient, adaptable, equitable and accessible for all of your residents, business owners and visitors. The recommended recommendations provided should be viewed as a stepping stone, guiding the City of Evanston to reframe and modernize the conversation surrounding the management of parking in your city."
The study found that Evanston's parking fees of Evanston were significantly lower than the average of other peer cities. It was recommended that those rates be raised, in order to achieve a goal of 10-20% vacancy in each block of parking. It was also suggested that blocks be differently priced based on their popularity and use. This trend followed in many other areas of the study, including residential passes and garage parking.
Another important part of the study was to observe parking issues during Northwestern University athletic games and other big events. They observed an elevated demand for street parking on neighborhood streets during these games, however, there were no unsafe or inaccessible issues on the streets. One issue that was observed was Evanston residents illegally selling their driveway or lawn space for parking. It was advised that police try to curb this issue.
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