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When Palo Alto adopted a parking-permit program in the neighborhoods around California Avenue seven years ago, the move was hailed by area residents as a hard-fought and long overdue victory after years of seeing their blocks filled up with vehicles belonging to area employees.
The program removed the ability of workers to park all day on residential streets in the Evergreen Park and Mayfield neighborhoods unless they purchase parking permits. While all residents had the ability to purchase parking permits, the city had limited the number that was available to employees and capped the worker permits at 250. It also scattered them through various zones to make sure that the blocks closest to the business district don’t get overwhelmed with cars.
Then, in 2022, it eliminated employee permits for almost all the zones in the permit area. The only exception was along El Camino Real, where the city made about 50 permits available for employees of area businesses.
Now, with the state Department of Transportation preparing to install bike lanes all along El Camino, the city is proposing a change that would allow employees to return to parking in the neighborhoods. Under the proposal, which the City Council will consider on Aug. 12, employees that had been parking on El Camino would be allowed to leave their cars in the residential zones. The city plans to make about 40 permits available for cars in the Evergreen Park area and to hold 10 more in reserve, in case demand exceeds expectations. Like in the past, a permit would apply to one of four residential zones.
A similar change is being planned in the Southgate neighborhood, which is north of Evergreen Park, and which has its own parking permit program. There, the city plans to reallocate 20 parking spots so that workers who currently park on El Camino would be able to use residential streets for all-day parking. Both the Southgate and the Evergreen Park-Mayfield programs will continue to allow two-hour parking for all cars without permits.
Overall, about 130 parking spots are set to be removed from the two residential programs to accommodate the Caltrans project, according to a new report from the city’s Office of Transportation.
The proposed changes seek to address recent concerns from area employers, some of whom had argued that the El Camino Real bike lane project would jeopardize their businesses. In June, as the council was preparing to endorse the Caltrans plan, it received a petition from 22 businesses along El Camino that opposed the project, with parking topping their list of concerns.
Several business owners also addressed the council at its June 18 meeting to raise concerns about losing El Camino parking. Tony Lee, owner of Stanford Coin Wash, suggested that losing parking would kill his business and negatively impact his customers. Galen Fletcher, owner of Sundance The Steakhouse, urged the council to make more parking spaces available on streets near his business once El Camino parking spaces go away.
“Without modifications, I will not have a fighting chance,” Fletcher said.
Not everyone, however, is thrilled about the changes. Keith Ferrell, a resident of Southgate, wrote a letter to the council this week opposing the new plan and requesting that no employee permits be allowed to move into the neighborhood.
“The employee permit area was established on ECR (El Camino Real) specifically to limit the amount of cars parking and driving in the neighborhood,” Ferrell wrote. “To now move those cars into the neighborhood cancels the previous work that was done and the agreement the council made with its residents.”
City staff believe the changes to the streets would be minimal. A traffic count conducted in spring 2023 showed that most streets had relatively low parking occupancy, in most cases below 65%. A report from the Office of Transportation notes that while some blocks in Evergreen Park saw usage over 65%, not a single one had an occupancy rate greater than 85%, the city’s threshold for high occupancy.
In Southgate, the city plans to reallocate 20 employee parking permits from the El Camino Real area to another zone within the district. Staff plan to measure the impact of this reconfiguration in the fall before deciding whether further modifications to the districts are needed, according to the report.
Nathan Baird, parking manager in the Office of Transportation, acknowledged at the June 18 meeting that bringing employees back into residential neighborhoods is a “sensitive conversation.” He argued, however, that the city has ample capacity for employee vehicles, not just on the streets but in area parking structures. This includes the garage at 350 Sherman Ave. that the city had finished building three years after the residential parking program took effect.
He also noted that in June the city had only sold two employee permits in the Southgate area, which suggests that any shift of parking from El Camino to the neighborhood streets should have a “minimal impact.” The new report indicates that there are now five employee permits in the Southgate zone that includes El Camino Real.
“Some residents are blanketly against any employee parking in the neighborhoods,” Baird said. “But in our experience, we do have additional availability in garages and lots.”
According to the new report, there are currently 48 active employee permits in the Evergreen Park-Mayfield program, which is limited to El Camino Real. Under the new approach, the city would scatter the 50 permits among four zones in the residential neighborhoods. The two largest zones in the district would accommodate 22 and 12 employee parking permits, respectively (each zone has more than 200 spaces available). The two smaller zones would get eight employee permits each under the new proposal.
The new report calls the proposed modification an “intermediate step toward balancing competing interests of finite curb space availability.” It acknowledges, however, that many area businesses and residents are displeased with the solution. Many businesses simply oppose the Caltrans project while many residents object to having employees’ vehicles return to the neighborhood streets.
“Staff value the feedback given thus far, noting that the preponderance of both business and resident feedback is not in alignment with the intermediate steps recommended,” the report states.
