King County Metro needs to lease more parking downtown; City losing too much money on parking garage

Numerous citizens have emailed us recently about how the increased enforcement at the downtown parking garage has made it extremely difficult to find parking to catch a bus. I promise you the city is working hard with Metro to resolve this.

Unlike many recent park and rides and transit center projects, Metro did not provide any parking when they built the Renton Transit Center. They intended it to be a place to transfer between buses, not a place to catch the bus.

But rider patterns have been different than Metro anticipated, so Metro has been negotiating with Renton to provide parking. Metro has been leasing 100 parking spots in our Renton taxpayer-funded garage at very low rates. They pay us $40,000 annually for this. Lately, the 100 spots have not been sufficient, but Metro has so far not agreed to lease any additional spots.

The garage cost Renton taxpayers 11 million dollars six years ago, and it was put in to make it convenient for shoppers to park downtown; it also costs us $70,000 annually just to maintain it. We give Metro over $20,000,000 (twenty million dollars!) per year to provide bus service to Renton, a staggering amount, so we do not understand why they can not either provide parking the way they do in other communities (they have build their own garages in other cities), or pay a little more than $40,000 to lease an adequate number of spaces from us.

I understand our Mayor will be meeting with folks from Metro on Monday to see if we can reach an understanding of some sort to resolve this.

If this interests you and you want to read more, read some of the emails on this topic by clicking “read more” below.

>>> Peter Renner 11/19/2008 11:40 AM >>>
Derek:

Thanks for writing in. We appreciate the opportunity to provide a better level of detail so that folks can understand how we got to where we are and what we can do to improve the situation. And I’ll start by saying that we all appreciate and support the need for more and better mass transit solutions.

The previously marked section of the garage, from the “official” start of the 4th floor and up, was originally designated for both METRO users and garage monthly parking permit holders (usually employees at local businesses). The 40 permit holders we have is nowhere near the number of holders that were originally anticipated.

So in effect, METRO users had roughly 340 spots from which to choose.
This didn’t matter too much when the garage was sparsely used.

However, METRO’s lease with the City is actually for 200 spaces. But there have been between 250 and 300 users for the last 9 months or so, and the ridership (as you noted ) is increasing. Further, the City wasn’t being compensated accordingly. And since the gap between what it costs us to pay interest on the bonds ($340K) and operate the garage ($70K) and what we get in revenue ($40K) is a Large Gap ($370K), we need METRO to pay market-based rates.

Clearly, the lease needed to be updated and the issues resolved. We requested that METRO renegotiate the terms of the lease.

Well, METRO has their own issues, and they have a constant struggle trying to balance improved service (more routes, more buses, more hours) with operational costs (including park and ride leases, security, maintenance, etc). With the County’s well-publicized tax revenue drop off, they’ve been scrambling to make adjustments and hopefully, provide the same or better service somehow at a time of higher need. Why promote mass transit if you can’t deliver it?

Nor is this phenomenon isolated to Renton – you must have also noticed through various media reports that park and rides are overfilled all over the Puget Sound.

This is a long way of saying that we have not reached an agreement with METRO for a new lease but we have both been negotiating in good faith to get there. The interim agreement we reached was for METRO to increase spaces to 250, pay for all them without the need for verifying counts, and we in turn will work with them to help make sure the folks using the spaces are indeed Metro riders. Monthly permit holders park on the other floors. Our part has been to offer METRO a very low rate so that they could offer free parking for commuters.

It’s been in the papers this week that METRO is also making some systemic changes and we’ll have to adjust for those when they are enacted (ETA early 2009?). This also impacts our lease negotiations – they’re not ready to commit until they know how much flexibility they have. I hope they can move quickly enough to be helpful to commuters all over the area, not just in the Renton Parking Garage or the Grady Way lot.

METRO has a number of choices how to deal with this but they all include providing more parking spaces for commuters – somewhere or other. It goes without saying that we all could anticipate there would be issues for commuters with 250 spaces available for 300+/- users, but METRO told us they couldn’t commit to more than they did at the time. In the meanwhile, some commuters have chosen to purchase monthly parking passes or pay the daily rate at the garage to avoid the hassle and/or to park on the lower floors.

There is a gent at King County who tracks user complaints and presumably, future decisions related to parking will be made on the basis of the messages he receives. His name is Steve Cahan steve.cahan@kingcounty.gov and we understand that he’s hearing from lots of folks. Good. METRO needs to step up to the plate and provide parking for their riders, whether that’s in Renton’s parking garage or somewhere else convenient to their riders.

All the folks sending emails already must have had an impact, because METRO has asked to meet next week with Diamond Parking, the operator the City uses.

I hope this information is helpful to you. If you have any follow up questions or comments, here is my contact info:

Peter M. Renner, CFM
Facilities Director

Parking at the garage to ride Metro and SoundTransit has become very difficult. The loss of an entire floor since Diamond took over causes the garage to be almost full by 7:30. When I arrived today at 8 the garage was completely full and people were turning around at the very top.

This is untenable and needs to be corrected. We need the 4th floor back at least.

Thanks in advance for your prompt attention.

Derek
Eagle Ridge Dr
Renton 98055

Council,

We are all receiving some comments from disgruntled citizens who are finding it more difficult to park in our municipal garage since we made recent changes. I have attached comments from Peter Renner with some additional information on this confusing issue.

While there used to be more spaces available to Park and Ride users, METRO was only paying for an average of 100 parkers, even though we found that more than 250 stalls were being used daily. They were tasked with making periodic counts and paying us a fee for the average number of cars exceeding the 100 count. Surprisingly, their counts never varied much higher than 100 cars even though more than double that number were being used. METRO has now agreed to commit to the 250 stalls but not higher amounts that we feel they need. The public is under the impression that we’re limiting spaces when that is under the control of METRO Transit. Our part has been to offer METRO a very low rate so that they could offer free parking for these commuters. Feel free to direct any calls or e-mails to Peter for a response to inquiries if you prefer not to get into the details.

Denis

>>> Peter Renner 11/18/2008 3:14 PM >>>

Here’s a variation on the reply I’ve been sending people. And I’ve been chatting with folks on the phone as well. Most people appreciate the additional background and infomation. There are three main issues –
1) A perceived reduction in the number of spaces
2) Confusion over who has the responsibility to provide parking for commuters.
3) Folks have been used to parking where they pleased without fear of enforcement, and that has changed.

The previously marked section of the garage, from the “official” start of the 4th floor and up, was originally designated for both Metro users and garage monthly parking permit holders (usually employees at local businesses). The 40 permit holders we have is nowhere near the number of holders that were originally anticipated.

So in effect, Metro users had roughly 340 spots from which to choose.
This didn’t matter too much when the garage was sparsely used.

However, Metro’s lease with the City is actually for 200 spaces. But there have been between 250 and 300 users for the last 9 months or so, and the average (as you noted ) is increasing. Further, the City wasn’t being compensated accordingly. And since the gap between what it costs us to pay interest on the bonds and operate the garage and what we get in revenue is a Large Gap, we need Metro to pay market-based rates.

Clearly, the lease needed to be updated and the issues resolved. We requested that Metro renegotiate the terms of the lease.

Well, Metro has their own issues, and they have a constant struggle trying to balance improved service (more routes, more buses, more hours) with operational costs (including park and ride leases, security, maintenance, etc). With the County’s well-publicized tax revenue drop off, they’ve been scrambling to make adjustments and hopefully, provide the same or better service somehow at a time of higher need. Why promote mass transit if you can’t deliver it?

Nor is this phenomenon isolated to Renton – you must have also noticed through various media reports that park and rides are overfilled all over the Puget Sound.

This is a long way of saying that we have not reached an agreement with Metro for a new lease but we have both been negotiating in good faith to get there. The interim agreement we reached was for Metro to increase spaces to 250, pay for all them without the need for verifying counts, and we in turn will work with them to help make sure the folks using the spaces are indeed Metro riders.

I don’t think it’s a big secret that Metro is also making some systemic changes and we’ll have to adjust for those when they are enacted (ETA early 2009?). This also impacts our lease negotiations – they’re not ready to commit until they know how much flexibility they have. I hope they can move quickly enough to be helpful to commuters all over the area, not just in the Renton Parking Garage or the Grady Way lot.

Metro has a number of choices how to deal with this but they all include providing more parking spaces for commuters – somewhere or other. It goes without saying that we all could anticipate there would be issues for commuters with 250 spaces available for 300+/- users, but Metro couldn’t commit to more than they did. In the meanwhile, some commuters have chosen to purchase monthly parking passes or pay the daily rate at the garage to avoid the hassle and/or to park on the lower floors.

There is a gent at King County who tracks user complaints and presumably, future decisions related to parking will be made on the basis of the messages he receives. His name is Steve Cahan steve.cahan@kingcounty.gov and we understand that he’s hearing from lots of folks. Good. Metro needs to step up to the plate and provide parking for their riders, whether that’s in Renton’s parking garage or somewhere else convenient to their riders.

I hope this information is helpful to you. If you have any follow up questions or comments, here is my contact info:”