Cape May OKs Performance-pricing Parking

CAPE MAY – While there’s broad agreement that one of Cape May’s most persistent problems is parking during the summer, there is little agreement on what to do about it.
Fear that a developer had plans for a four-story parking garage in the heart of the city’s historic district derailed an attempt by the city to designate the block demarcated by Washington, Lafayette, Ocean and Franklin streets a redevelopment area.
Recently, a group of residents and business owners along Bank Street opposed a city plan to move a portion of the street to one-way traffic gaining parking spaces in the process.
The Parking Advisory Committee worked on the problem for months, making a set of recommendations to the city’s governing body late last year. On April 16, Cape May City Council considered an ordinance that incorporated one of the principal recommendations of the advisory body, performance pricing. It would raise rates on the most desirable spaces in the city from $1 to $2 an hour. 
The Concept
Performance pricing represents an attempt to take parking areas around the city and price them according to their status as preferred spaces. By raising the price of parking in the most preferred spaces near the Washington Street Mall, the concept would theoretically create more turnovers in those spaces, discourage long-term parkers from using them, and highlight alternative spaces that are available at lower or no cost.
The pricing scheme would then be linked to a revamped free public transportation system that would provide transport from otherwise less desirable parking locations further from the town center. Part of the revenue gain from the more expensive prime parking spaces would be used to help fund the free transportation system.
Members of the advisory committee claimed that evidence that performance pricing works was evident in the differential pricing charged by the Washington Commons Shopping Center. “During the season, it is one of the most expensive places to park in the city, but there is always a spot available,” one committee member argued.
The committee rejected the idea of a parking garage, with members citing the high cost of maintaining a garage, especially in a seasonal economy.
The vision proposed was one that makes use of spaces further from the town center, incentivizes individuals to use these spaces through differential pricing and provides a reliable transportation system. The committee sees the further evolution of the plan built on technology in which smart kiosks and real-time pricing and availability information would eventually be available through a smartphone app. 
The Opposition
Some members of the local business community used the public hearing on the ordinance to voice opposition. “You only get one chance to make a first impression,” one noted, adding that “a doubling of rates is not welcoming.”
“Don’t give people a reason to go somewhere else,” was a common refrain from those small business owners who opposed the move.
It was difficult to gain a sense of the depth of opposition from local business since no survey data or other comprehensive opinion information was presented. 
The fear was that Cape May would be less attractive as a dining and shopping area for visitors, including locals, from outside the city. Comparisons were made to Avalon and Rio Grande where parking is free and to Stone Harbor where business district parking would be half the cost of Cape May after the adoption of the ordinance. 
Council Split
As has been the case in some other recent council deliberations, the two newest members of council were not in synch with their colleagues. Both Zack Mullock and Stacey Sheehan proposed an across the board 25-cent-per-hour increase for all parking meters with the intent to use the added revenue to fund the transportation system. 
Advocates of the performance-pricing model argued that the plan to raise rates across the board accomplished nothing toward a long-range solution to the parking problem.
For those supporting the advisory committee’s proposals, a parking system that fails to engage in “beneficial discrimination” in pricing doesn’t move the city in a new direction, one in which dumb meters give way to smart kiosks, static website information yields to real-time knowledge and incentivized parking supported by a quality transportation system.
With little doubt that the votes were in hand to support the resolution as written by a 3-to-2 margin, Council member Shaine Meier offered an amendment which he hoped would gain some support from those opposing the plan.
Meier’s amendment reduced the area originally designated as prime parking in the resolution, most significantly by removing a portion of Beach Avenue from the designated area.
Meier’s amendment carried and the resolution moving the city to a tiered-pricing scheme for parking was adopted on a 3-to-2 vote with Mullock and Sheehan opposing.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.