You May Need Cash to Park at the City Hall Garage

Parking in the city hall garage has been free since the hall was completed, but the honeymoon is over. Starting June 4, parking at the garage could cost you . . . up to $10 for a full day.

If you need to park there within regular business hours (8 a.m.- 5 p.m.) on Monday through Friday, parking will be free for the first 30 minutes. After that, the costs start adding up; $3 for 31 minutes - 1 hour of parking, plus an additional charge of $1.50 for each additional half hour.

After 5 p.m. everyday, $5 will be charged for those newly entering the garage and added to the total for the cars already there. The total will be capped at $10/day. Basically, the city hall garage becomes like pretty much every state garage and lot in town; except there are a few reasons you might not be charged for parking.

Parking will be free if:

it's a Thursday when a City Council meeting will be held
it's 11 a.m. - 1:15 p.m. on a Friday (when the Live From The Plaza concerts are held)
you are really and truly visiting City Hall, where you can get your parking validated
you visit a 2nd Street Retail District business from 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. Monday-Friday and get your parking validated (although this only gives you two free hours)
you need somewhere to park from 5:45am until 8am M-F, or 5:45am - 5pm Sat-Sun.

[City of Austin announcement]

Photo by loudtiger on flickr

Contact the author of this article or email tips@austinist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Elizabeth S. in News on May 14, 2007 1:45 PM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Scooby

Cory:
I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I was suggesting that bus commuters would be fitting the bill for free parking.
Every city resident, including the poor bus rider and the old widow who has no desire to go visit the boutiques & coffeeshops on 2nd street, would be paying for drivers to park there, if not for the (IMO belated) charge for parking.

I don't think I am going to convince you that this a bad thing and I don't think you will convince me.
Present an arguement that isn't "double taxation" nonsense, and you might have a chance. By your logic, I should receive free water, sewer & electricity service, since tax dollars paid for the pipes & wires to my neighborhood & house.

The parking under city hall (and all over downtown) is a scarce resource. Charging a fee for its use is a rational method of allocating this scarce resource, while (hopefully) providing revenue that might offset the costs of operating City Hall.

Grape Ape

Why would you pay to park in Zilker? There are tons of free parking areas around the park. I've never understood why anyone does that. Sometimes you have to wonder if they just do it to extract money from stupid people.

M1EK

Cory,

If we don't charge for parking, something else has to pick up the slack. That something else, at the city level, is going to affect bus riders (essentially all other revenue sources available to the city would hit bus riders and car drivers alike).

As for "funding city hall" - no, it wasn't supposed to. But the whole double-tax argument is a load of crap anyways - just as much with toll roads. The Soviet Union model of handling scarcity is the one you and your antitollkooks want us to live with - i.e., low or free prices, rationing via long lines. We're supposed to be smarter than that here in the Land Of The Market.

Yes, even when public dollars paid for the thing originally - when demand far exceeds supply, price is the best way to manage it. This applies to park parking too - notice that you have to pay to park at Zilker on the weekends in the summer? DOUBLE TAX OMG! Without that price, you wouldn't be able to find parking in that area. (Arguably it needs to be higher since it's still hard to find a spot on many days).

Cory

Since my tax rate is of so much interest. I will tell you that I live well in the city limits and pay accordingly. I wasn't complaining about the toll roads. I won't be affected, however the point I was trying to make is that this is another example of the city double dipping into tax payer pockets. City hall was not supposed to be funded by parking fees. It is a public building that was paid for by publice dollars hence the comparison to the toll roads. I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I was suggesting that bus commuters would be fitting the bill for free parking. I don't think I am going to convince you that this a bad thing and I don't think you will convince me.

Scooby

Huh? So the poor people taking the bus should pay for drivers to park downtown? If the free parking was restricted to city residents, I wouldn't mind as much, but that would add a whole other layer of city bureacracy for vehicle registration or taxpayer IDs that I don't even want to contemplate.

I don't know what your CoA tax burden is, but I know what mine is, and I know that if you are bitching about toll roads, you probably live on the perimeter of town, maybe even outside the city of Austin.

Downtown real estate is expensive. Why should the people of Austin subsidize suburbanites driving into downtown by paying for their parking, or the roads to get them into downtown, for that matter?

Cory

Scooby. You don't know what my tax burden is, but it's really smart of you to assume you pay more.

Good to see that people want to encourage parking as a luxury. Poor people you take the bus. people with money will be using the parking spots downtown. piss on the poor. What a lovely progressive city.

Scooby

I don't see why my tax dollars should subsidize people who want to park downtown. I pay city taxes (probably a lot more than Cory) but I don't ever see a need to use the city hall parking.

Stan

Uh, you can park downtown for $5-8... ALL NIGHT. That's pretty damned cheap.

4 to 6 hours (or more, if you get drunk and leave your car until the morning) for less than $10.

Stop bitching.

the sweetish chef

WOW that really sucks. a lot.

mermaidshoes

austin needs smartpark... one of the best things about portland. 99 cents an hour (though it looks like they've raised it to $1.25/hr, which is still not bad) is beautiful pricing, and they have wicked cheap weekend/weeknight maximums to boot. smartpark, i love you. please come to austin. please? just don't bring the rain.

SolMan-ATX

Makes sense to me. The tax payers paid for City Hall and the city should use that asset to the benefit of all the taxpayers, not just to benefit the folks who go to III Forks.

Some people think parking should be free. That's not the way cities work. Downtown real estate is expensive. Building parking garages is expensive. Therefore, a parking space comes at a price. If free parking is your motivator, don't come downtown. If you're really cheap and/or broke, take the bus or ride a bike.