Karen Brewer

Darien Commuter Parking-Update

A few months ago,I published a post about the process for obtaining a parking permit in the Darien,Ct commuter parking lots. I mentioned then that the process was under review, and the town hoped to authorize additional spaces at both the Noroton Heights lots and the Darien station.Below is the article that ran in this weeks’ paper with the details of new, “incentivized” parking spaces.

TUESDAY  Sept. 29 — For the price of $200 and a few extra steps, you can own a Darien incentive railroad parking permit.

After a brief public hearing, the Board of Selectmen voted unanimously Monday to amend the town’s parking regulations to allow for incentivized parking permits at the railroad station lots. The selectmen also server as the Darien Parking Authority.

The only change to the town’s parking regulations was the addition of the definition of an incentive parking permit, which is now defined as “a special permit to be used in select designated areas where the regular permit price has been discounted to encourage parking in designated spaces.”

The creation of these discounted parking permits comes as a result of the staggering five to seven year current wait list for a Darien parking permit. In an attempt to shorten this list, the selectmen looked at converting under-utilized voucher spots to annual permit spots.

“This is about moving people off the wait list; this isn’t about revenue,” First Selectman Evonne Klein said previously.

At the Sept. 8 selectmen meeting, town administrative officer Karl Kilduff presented where and how these conversions would be possible. Kilduff said that conversions were only feasible at three of the railroad parking lots — the Leroy West lot and the Tokeneke Road lot at the Darien station, and the Darien EMS-Post 53 lot at the Noroton Heights station.

Kilduff presented possible options at each of the lots. At the Leroy West lot, he offered two options: the first was to convert the front 50 voucher spaces along the rail line to full-priced permit spaces. These front voucher spaces are heavily used each day; therefore, by converting them to permit, it shortens the waiting list and displaces those permit parkers to the under-utilized areas of the parking lot.

The second option was to convert the under-utilized voucher spaces in the back of the Leroy West lot to discounted parking permits. There are only about 20 spaces where this is possible.

Kilduff also suggested converting about 25 of the far, hardly-used voucher spots in the Tokeneke Road lot to incentive parking permit spots.

In Noroton Heights, there were two options for the Post 53 lot. The first was to turn all 107 voucher spots into discounted parking permit spots. This option would create a large number of permit spaces, but displace the 12 regular voucher parkers who park there normally.

The second option was to retain enough voucher spaces for current users, and then convert the rest of the lot to discounted permit parking. This would create about 87 permit spaces, while still retaining 20 voucher spots for those current regular parkers.

The selectmen decided to convert the spaces in the back of the Leroy West lot, the far spaces in the Tokeneke Road lot, and the fewer spaces in the Post 53 lot. But at daily commuter and Selectman David Bayne’s suggestion, they chose to convert about half of the proposed amount of spaces.

“It is a delicate dance in those parking lots,” Bayne said previously. “If you try a radical change in any one area, we could wreak havoc in the morning time when people are already grumpy to begin with.”

At this suggestion, the selectmen voted on Sept. 8 to go with switching 10 spots at Leroy West, 15 at Tokeneke Road, and 40 at Post 53.

After this vote, the last steps to take before the incentive parking permits could be rolled out were a public hearing on amending the parking regulations to allow for incentivized parking, and a selectmen vote on the matter.

Only one comment was made during the public hearing, which was held Monday, and it came from Jim Cameron, chairman of the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council. He only requested hearing exactly what was going to be amended.

The selectmen then voted unanimously to approve the new regulation, and the discounted price of $200 — $115 cheaper than a standard annual permit.

“You did a great job, Karl,” Bayne said Monday to the town’s administrative officer. “Let’s go with the $200 pricing fee and see what kind of interest we get at that level.”

The $200 permits will be offered to current annual permit holders first, and then will be extended to current residents on the lengthy wait list.

According to Kilduff, commuters can expect these new discounted permits to be offered in January of 2010. “We will be rolling them out as part of the permit renewal process for next year,” Kilduff said Tuesday.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Community Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. jeffrey said at October 9th, 2009 at 3:21 am

   karen, you might want to edit your blog url on the forbes comment you made–you have an extra s in there.

2. Karen Brewer said at October 9th, 2009 at 9:02 am

   oooh thanks….will do

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