Running through a red light

City didn’t want to hear warnings against extended parking meter hours

Signs with new hours are up. Unlike other areas of the city, Sundays are free in the Northwest District.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation put out feelers in March about extending parking meter enforcement in the Northwest District three hours longer into the evening.

Instead of ending at 7 p.m. six days a week, the bureau wanted motorists to pay until 10 p.m. Meter enforcement would also begin an hour earlier, 8 a.m. instead of 9 a.m.

The Northwest Parking Stakeholder Advisory Committee was the appropriate setting to launch a trial balloon. Representatives of various sectors of the district meet monthly with PBOT staff to advise them on policy and practice.

PBOT staff asked committee members to designate a color—red, green or yellow—to reflect their leaning on the topic.

“I don’t feel a need to extend the hours,” Parker McNulty said.

“I just think it's a bad idea to extend meter hours into the evening,” Steve Pinger said. “I think it sends the wrong message. If everybody feels like this is a good idea, then we should transmit that, but that's not the sense I get in this room.”

“I'm a little red on this,” Amy Spreadborough said. “I feel like I don't have enough information to make a good decision on this, but I don't like stuff that puts our neighborhood at a disadvantage versus other neighborhoods where people could visit and spend money in.”

Having heard three red light reactions to extending the hours, PBOT Parking Program Specialist Stanley Ong’s ear was tuned to a different voice.

“I'm getting feedback that doing a temperature check at this point is not something that we actually really want to do at this moment,” said Ong, using extra words instead of explanation.

“This is the first part in a multistep process to inform the director of how the neighbors feel about it. The next step will be, at some point, I'm assuming, we will give our direct feedback with the colors or anything else before a decision is made.”

Somehow PBOT never got around to another color-keyed temperature check.

In July, the new hours, along with an hourly rate boost from $2 to $2.60 an hour to go into effect Oct. 1, were announced.

If PBOT truly wanted to know how people felt about the changes, many were ready to tell them. The NW Examiner asked former members of the stakeholder committee and local business people what they thought of the extended meter hours.

“This is the first time we have heard about the proposal and are disappointed in the lack of outreach by the city,” said Don Singer, a former member of the SAC whose family owns many properties in the district.

“Nob Hill has worked hard to recover from the events of the past five years, and enforcing parking meters until 10 p.m. is not welcoming. The Central City needs visitors and new residents to support new and existing businesses, and this is not rolling out the welcome mat.”

“I’m not sure where they're getting their information about an increase in parking demand for business parking after 5,” said Greg Hermens, co-owner of the Nob Hill Bar & Grill. “Downtown and Northwest Portland have not even come close to what it was pre-pandemic, with the homeless, higher prices and open drug use in the area. People are just not coming in from the burbs.”

Hermens mentioned the recent closures of 23rd Avenue dining mainstays Santa Fe Taqueria and The Ram’s Head.

“They should be looking to get people back to the downtown and Northwest area with free parking, not chasing them away with higher and longer meter rates.”

“I haven't spoken to a single business owner here that has any idea about this change,” said Tom Ranieri, owner of Cinema 21 and a former SAC member.

“It's clear to me that the decision to hike the hours of enforcement had nothing to do with the formerly enshrined guiding principle of following the parking occupancy data. It's completely about gathering more revenue, not about parking management,” Ranieri said.

Rick Michaelson, a Northwest resident and commercial property and business owner who chaired the SAC for its first 10 years, focuses on the numbers and policies that are supposed to guide the meter program. Achieving 85% occupancy of on-street parking stalls is one of the goals. Promoting faster turnover of parking spaces is another.

In this case, Michaelson doubts there will be much impact on turnover—given that patrons of higher-end restaurants will be unfazed by paying a few dollars more to park—while the bureau would certainly gain “a meaningful source of revenue.”

Two groups that will suffer are low-paid restaurant workers who do not have parking permits and visitors to Cinema 21, for whom a few hours of parking will rival the cost of a movie ticket, he said.

Sami Gaston, owner of Négociant and Bar Diane on Northwest 21st Avenue, said she had not been notified of the metering changes.

“We rely on an evening dinner crowd that is likely to use street parking,” Gaston said. “It also might make customers reconsider or factor in the parking expense when planning on dining out for an evening. We're seeing a lot of cost increases across the board, so if things wind up playing out like that, it could be problematic.”

Tanya March, who serves on the Northwest District Association board and runs a walking tour business, said the increased meter hours will deter visitors.

“It’s going to be really hard on businesses,” she said.

The metering expansion may also have violated city policy.

As reported by The Oregonian last month, metering changes enacted in Northwest Portland and three other districts did not meet the 85% occupancy threshold set in the Performance Based Parking Management Manual adopted in 2018.

“The figures show fewer vehicles used on-street parking in the Lloyd and Northwest Portland districts in 2024 than two years prior, despite previous claims by officials that ‘parking data shows that there is a rising demand for space across the city,’” The Oregonian reported.

“In a perfect environment, where parking prices are where they should be, PBOT is at cost recovery and the bureau isn’t facing severe budget constraints, we follow the Parking Management Manual more closely,” bureau spokesperson Hannah Schafer told The Oregonian.