By Katie Spencer
Carrboro Commons Writer

Carrboro town officials have called on UNC-Chapel Hill graduate students to size up downtown parking issues.

The parking study is a part of a workshop course in the university’s Department of City and Regional Planning. It is designed to give students a chance to put their academic knowledge to use with real-world problems, like finding a place to park for Saturday afternoon errands.

Carrboro resident Sue Morgan looks for a parking spot at Carr Mill. “Parking decks are not very much in the spirit of Carrboro,” Morgan said. “But if people insist on having cars, they have to have somewhere to put them.”
Staff photo by Katie Spencer

The 10 students in the class have been checking parking turnover rates in public lots and surveying business owners to learn just how much parking is needed and when, said Daniel Rodriguez, associate professor and instructor for the course.

“Downtown Carrboro is the wild west of parking,” said Patrick McDonough, a Carrboro resident who has a master’s degree in transportation and land use planning.

Chava Kronenberg, a graduate student who will receive her master’s degree in city planning in May, said the specific problem spots the class has found are behind Open Eye Café on Roberson Street and near Cat’s Cradle on the night of a big concert.

While the group will present their full findings and recommendations to the Board of Aldermen on April 17, Kronenberg did say that 40 percent of the cars chalked in public lots were staying long past the two-hour limit.

Her group estimated that shifting these long-term parkers to lots on the fringes of downtown would increase parking spaces by 30 percent.

Kronenberg said she is reluctant to say the town has a parking problem because there is plenty of parking just a little outside of the core downtown area.

“If you assume people’s behavior can’t change and they are unwilling to walk a block, then yes, there is a problem,” she said.

Carrboro officials informed the students that free parking was a top priority, Kronenberg said. But both she and McDonough said price is a good way to manage parking.

A line of the course syllabus reads, “Although the importance of parking as a policy lever for decreasing driving is increasingly recognized among planning researches, political support is weak.”

“That tends to be consistent with where a lot of politicians are,” said McDonough, who sent a letter to the Board of Aldermen about transportation planning in light of coming economic development.

“They’re thinking about a deck, and I think that could ruin the nature of Carrboro,” Kronenberg said. She also said that parking lots take up an enormous amount of space.

The Carr Mill lot, for example, takes up more space than Harris Teeter, CVS and Carr Mill Mall combined.

The lack of space downtown means that a new parking lot or deck might not get parkers any closer than the existing lots that aren’t being fully used.

Adena Messinger, transportation planner for Carrboro, said the town is putting an emphasis on multi-modal access to downtown, one piece of which is parking.

“The town is very conscious of the fact that there are other ways to get downtown,” she said.

Kronenberg said her group understands their role in the process. “We’re not here to solve the problem, we’re here to analyze the problem and give many options,” she said.

There are a number of free public parking options that people just aren’t taking advantage of, Kronenberg said.

“On-the-street parking is allowed anywhere in Carrboro, and people just don’t ever park on the street,” she said. The only exceptions are main thoroughfares like Main Street, Weaver Street and Greensboro Street.

There is a lot across from the RBC Bank, as well. “Always there, always empty,” Kronenberg said. After 5 p.m. and on weekends people can park at the lot for the UNC-CH School of Public Health building on Roberson Street.