In recent years, San Francisco’s economy has boomed. Ferry ridership from Alameda’s two terminals boomed as well, helping bring the Water Emergency Transportation Authority’s (WETA) ridership to more than three million passengers annually. Automobile parking demand at both terminals increased steadily. The terminals’ parking lots regularly filled to capacity, with excess demand spilling onto nearby streets. At one terminal, Harbor Bay, complaints poured in from nearby residents whose streets were experiencing spillover parking problems.
To improve passenger access and address these complaints, WETA engaged Nelson\Nygaard to survey parking occupancy and prepare an access and parking plan for both terminals. As a follow-up, Nelson\Nygaard prepared an implementation plan. Patrick Siegman directed both projects, while a Principal at Nelson\Nygaard.
The plan recommends improvements for people arriving by all modes of transportation, from walking, bicycling and transit to driving and parking. It advances WETA and the City of Alameda’s shared goals of increasing transit ridership, reducing motor vehicle trips and pollution, and preventing unwanted spillover parking onto residential streets.
The plan includes routes, schedules, and budgets for new feeder transit routes. It provides conceptual designs and cost estimates for road diets on major streets, transforming excess vehicle lanes into protected bicycle lanes. The plan also recommends parking pricing and management strategies. The parking pricing plan uses pay-by-phone technology to price both lots and curb parking, eliminating the cost of purchasing and maintaining pay stations. License plate recognition systems simplify enforcement. Parking revenues will be devoted to improving access by environmentally-friendly modes, such as feeder buses, and to lowering ferry fares.
The plan also established systemwide parking policy goals and objectives, which were approved by the WETA Board in 2016.
Images courtesy of WETA