While residents look to be doing their part, there’s clearly room for improvement for commuters into our city. According to the MTC data, 81.1 percent of those coming into our city are choosing to do so by car (10.7% by Carpool) with less than 10% taking transit. By comparison, only 60% of commuters into neighboring Berkeley choose to drive with 10% of these by carpool.

Many blame the relatively ample amount of free/inexpensive lot & street parking within our city as a draw for car trips and the emissions that come with them. Encouraging more commuters into our city to take transit and discouraging solo driving is slowly getting more attention as residents and businesses compete for increasingly scarce on-street parking.

“I concur that free or low-cost parking is a key factor in the rate of driving” noted MTC Senior Planner Dave Vautin. Vautin referenced a recent study showing that 77% of commuters with free parking drove alone, while only 39% of those who had to pay drove alone. Vautin also noted a key driver in Emeryville residents ranking so high may be their commute pattern into SF and Oakland where parking rates tend to be higher.

Discouraging Solo Drivers and Mitigating Parking Issues

Implementing more metered and green zone parking is a tool that has been recommended by West and other transportation studies for curbing solo driving. These measures also encourage parking turnover and help ensure spaces are more readily available for our local businesses and encourage patronage. Managing on-street parking requires some capital investment and enforcement, but this can be offset by the revenue stream it creates. This revenue can in turn be used for things like enhancing walkability/bike-ability or improved streetscaping. Issues with enforcement are being solved today through technology such as apps that can extend time without punitive measures like ticketing. Parking models such as those in Santa Cruz implement a tiered scale of payment that increases with every hour parked to encourage short-term parking and discourage “all-day” parkers.

“Emeryville has been a pioneer in implementing GreenTRIP standards into residential projects” West noted when contacted, “but they’ve been a bit slower to embrace these policies for on-street parking for visitors and commuters. Just as private parking owners have figured out in Emeryville, paid parking is the best way to manage this valuable public commodity – the curb – so that people can actually find a parking spot when they want one.”

Encouraging Emeryville employers to provide free transit passes to their employees is another tool that would encourage transit use according to West. Businesses that purchase transit passes in bulk can receive a substantial discount as high as 90% in some cases. Businesses like Plum Organics and TubeMogul have been cited by neighbors I’ve personally chatted with for rapidly expanding without mitigating their employee parking.

Many of these transit policy recommendations were outlined in a this 2008 Parking Policy and Management Implementation Plan but never fully implemented. The City of Berkeley recently implemented a three-year transportation pilot program called goBerkeley. Read More about the methodology of the MTC’s study and the performance of other cities on MTC’s Vital Signs.