Lately, signs reading “lot full,” “monthly parking only” and “no parking” are common sights for downtown workers, shoppers and visitors.
“It’s crazy, there’s no place to park and when you do find a place, it’s outrageously expensive,” said Emmanel Madison, who has been a parking attendant for Allright Parking for three years.
And it seems that drivers are just going to have to “hang in there” for at least two years until the downtown parking shortage makes a turnaround, said John Schneider, adviser of transportation and riverfront development issues to Downtown Cincinnati Inc.
“There is a sense of urgency to coordinate a response about the deficit of parking,” he said. “We are at that point of maximum pain in downtown for parking. But over time, parking will come back and there will be five times as many spaces.”
Although Schneider said the Fort Washington Way project is not completely responsible for the shortage of parking, he recognizes that it has played its part.
“It’s not all due to Fort Washington Way, but it has caused some parking to move north of Fourth Street, causing a shortage up there,” he said.
The first phase of the Fort Washington Way project is done. The second phase begins in April.
That means the closing of southbound Interstate 71 at Fort Washington Way for four months so that contractors can complete connections with bridges.
Northbound lanes and the current access to and from downtown will remain open.
The city has hired the Dan Pinger Public Relations firm to organize public information about the progress of the project and give presentations to downtown and regional businesses and organizations that might be affected by the detours. Last year, almost 200 organizations requested the informational presentation.
‘We’ve done about 15 presentations to more than 50 different groups,” said Debra Decourcy, a counselor at Dan Pinger Public Relations and communications manager for the project “The goal is to alert people to what is happening in the second phase.”
Some of the groups that have requested the presentation have included the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and American Airlines, she said.
“The detours will mainly affect regional motorists coming from the suburbs, like Mason, going to the airport,” Decourcy said. “People coming and going to work in the downtown area will not be affected.”
She said the reason is that drivers have settled into the traffic patterns caused by the first phase of construction, and those patterns should remain the same.
Sally Hilvers, spokeswoman for Metro Bus, agrees that drivers have found ways around the construction.
“It’s hard to know for sure if it is because of Fort Washington Way construction, but there have been general increases in (bus) ridership,” Hilvers said. “I think people are seeking alternatives to fighting traffic and parking problems.”
Metro has added new bus routes to include areas such as Eastgate, Harrison and Fairfield to keep up with the increasing demand of suburban commuters, she said.
“There is a convergence of factors making it difficult to get in and out of downtown easily,” Hilvers said. “People are finding it makes a lot of sense to use public transportation instead of fighting traffic or searching for a parking space.”
But Mary Davis, a parking attendant for 25 years, thinks that just as many people are driving their cars downtown.
“There are plenty of complaints because we have started to fill up so early,” said Davis, who works in the Garfield Parking garage. “It’s getting busier and busier because after closing those other garages down there by the stadium, people are having a hard time finding parking.”
Davis said that she hoped relief was on the way so that complaints would quiet. But she probably won’t have peace anytime soon.
Schneider said this parking crunch should be completely alleviated in the next five years.
“This is a temporary situation where parking is fluctuating because of a prosperous economy and riverfront development,” he said. “We haven’t been confident enough before to build new parking because the need was lacking.”
But now there are more visitors and shoppers using downtown, Schneider said
“There are no bad guys here,” he said. “There is just a demand for more parking.” ©
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 1999.