According to Amy McWhorter, New Braunfels’ downtown development coordinator, stricter enforcement of two-hour parking limit zones will encourage citizens to utilize downtown’s long-term parking options.
In the 2019-20 city budget, $23,000 was set aside for the purchase and installation of hardware and software that would allow officers to more efficiently enforce parking regulations.
“The way the city has historically done it is very expensive and very time-consuming,” said Jeffrey Jewell, New Braunfels’ director of economic and community development.
Christopher Looney, the city’s planning and community development director, said the current system requires officers to manually record vehicle information by chalking tires and can be hard to keep track of and difficult to enforce.
The new system includes hardware mounted to enforcement vehicles that scans license plates and automatically logs the information.
The city is also working to change public perception of parking availability in downtown. There are about 944 public parking spots in downtown, including on-street parking.
A 2016 study by Walker Parking Consultants found that although a large amount of public parking exists and is even underutilized, a lack of signage and abundance of private parking in downtown leads people to believe there is a shortage of public spaces.
Since the study’s completion, the city has added additional directional signage to help direct drivers to both on-street and off-street public parking options, but the issue persists.
“There’s a lot of unoccupied parking in downtown that’s not publicly available,” McWhorter said. “The issue right now is that all the spaces appear equal.”
In fall 2019, the city added 57 free parking spots to the county-owned Bridge Street Parking Lot with a $150,000 grant from the New Braunfels Economic Development Corp. The lot is located at the corner of Seguin Avenue and East Bridge Street.
As the city grows and develops, parking options will need to grow as well, Jewell said.
City zoning policy requires new commercial developments in the downtown area to provide off-street parking for their patrons.
“You have to be constantly evaluating parking in your downtown,” Jewell said. “There’s definitely more activity in downtown than there was four years ago.”
