By DAVID MARTIN
After a consultant encouraged the city of Kansas City, Missouri, to collect more revenue from on-street parking, meters have begun to appear outside the downtown loop.
A row of parking meters now lines the west side of Baltimore Avenue, between Truman Road and 16th Street. More machines are on the way. “In time, additional meters will find their way into the Crossroads," says Dennis Gagnon, the spokesman for the city's Capital Improvements Management Office.
The city is acting on recommendations that Walker Parking Consultants, an Indianapolis outfit, presented last fall. The consultants concluded that Kansas City had too few meters making too little money. Walker encouraged the city to begin charging $1 an hour for on-street parking and to start installing meters "where feasible" in the River Market, the Crossroads and on Hospital Hill.
At the time Walker took its inventory, the city was collecting about $53,000 a month from its meters. St. Louis takes in five times that amount.
Gagnon says the city wants motorists to get in the habit of using garages and lots for lengthier visits to the urban core. "Most cities do it this way," he says.
Parking is a touchy issue in the Crossroads. David Morris, who heads the Crossroads Community Association's infrastructure committee, suggests that businesses and residents won't be happy if the city starts putting meters into the ground just to make a few bucks. “I don’t know that one size fits at all," he says.
Gagnon says city officials look forward to meeting folks in the neighborhood to talk about parking plans.
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