Tuesday’s city council meeting was intended as a workshop for feedback on Campustown and Downtown parking improvements, along with a look at city ordinances prohibiting fireworks.

The council had previously been presented with a review of Campustown and Downtown area parking usage, fines and regulation. It showed that the Downtown district has around 1,200 spaces, uses 36% of the metered space capacity, and saw just over 10,000 violations in 2016.

Campustown has an inventory of 360 metered spots (not including the intermodal facility) with 63% usage and over 20,000 parking violations, according to an agenda preview from Bronwyn Beatty-Hansen.

In fact, the review reports 24,025 parking violations were distributed in Campustown in 2016, not including football game day violations.

At the meeting, council members addressed concerns they had on the Campustown/Downtown Business District, Intermodal Facility, and Surrounding Neighborhood Parking Review.

1. Signs difficult to understand

Parking violators had mentioned that signs and regulations were hard to comply with or even understand, specifically alternate-side parking. Council members had personal experience where even they had been confused by posted regulations.

“I often have to get out of the car to go to the sign to read it,” Council member Peter Orazem said.

Council member Gloria Bletcher mentioned she had noticed just that day that there were different parking regulations between Little, Welch and Hayward, a block and half apart.

2. Fines

Staff said the common violations are expired meters and failure-to-move violations, particularly were someone lives where there is not available over-night parking.

In the Campustown and Downtown area there are concerns about the times when parking is no longer allowed. Council member Bronwyn Beatty-Hansen added that she’s had feedback that the 2 a.m. move time also encourages business, particularly bar customers, to drive after leaving the bar just to move their car.

3. Visitors becoming violators

Whether siblings, significant others, parents or friends, concern for visitors who need to park was brought up frequently during the meeting, particularly in neighborhoods surrounding the Campustown and Downtown areas.

The Intermodal facility, which belongs to Iowa State but is used by Ames, was included in the study. Mark Miller represented the Intermodal facility as its building supervisor.

“I think a lot of the people who are using it, they park there all weekend long,” Miller said.

4. Intermodal facility isn’t first option for parking

Despite being full on weekends, during the week the Intermodal is rarely full. It is the only parking garage near Campustown, with the exception of the Memorial Union parking garage, but Intermodal is used mostly on the weekend by visitors. Miller said Iowa State staff prefers to park on campus and says the Intermodal is too far. Students also choose to park on the streets, Miller said.

The council proposed that lower street rates may discourage use of the Intermodal. One solution could be raising costs of street meter parking to increase the use of the Intermodal facility.

5. Using policy to encourage multimodal transport

Ames was ranked as the fourth-best college town to own a car by ValuePenguin. Betcher quoted the statistic and said she wants Ames to move farther down in the ranking and encourage multimodal transportation. Beatty-Hansen also wanted multimodal transport to be included in future policies.