Throughout the El Camino Real BRT planning process, we’ve been asking city councils, city staff, city commissioners and members of the public what the best balance of uses on El Camino Real is. The topic of on-street parking has brought out especially divergent responses. Some cities see on-street parking on El Camino Real as essential while some cities think it should go. Santa Clara’s council voted to accommodate bicycle lanes on El Camino Real by narrowing the landscaped median instead of removing on-street parking. Sunnyvale has adopted an on-street parking policy that gives preference to mobility uses like bike lanes over stationary uses like parking. Business owners see on-street parking as crucial to their bottom line while cyclists see a wasted opportunity to accommodate a bike lane. So, how important is on-street parking? How much on-street, side street and off-street parking is there? And how much is used? The answers may be surprising…
There are 28,033 parking spaces along El Camino Real/The Alameda between Downtown San Jose and the Palo Alto Transit Center and on average, about 18,000 of them are empty each day. That includes 1,945 on-street spaces, 2,798 side street spaces and 23,290 spaces in parking lots located adjacent to the corridor.
VTA conducted a parking inventory and occupancy survey in the fall of 2011 (data tables here) and found that 75% of on-street spaces on El Camino Real are unoccupied across the six cities, ranging from 47% occupancy in Palo Alto to 5% occupancy in Mountain View. Side street spaces were similarly underused, ranging from 44% occupancy in Mountain View to 28% occupancy in San Jose. Parking lots adjacent to El Camino Real were also underused, ranging from 56% occupancy in San Jose to 30% occupancy in Sunnyvale and Palo Alto. While parking occupancy rates varied from block to block, the overall finding is that El Camino Real has much more parking capacity than demand.
