The Nine Mile light rail station is served by one of the busiest park-n-Ride garages in the RTD system, and out-of-district riders have to pay to park there. Photo by Jeffrey Beall at Flickr.com.

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

RTD’s pay-to-park program isn’t paying.

The program that charges out-of-district transit riders $4 a day to use one of the 15 high-demand park-n-Ride lots and $2 a day at the 18 medium-demand lots, among other fees, has brought in $361,000, only 33 percent of its expected revenue.

But it also hasn’t cost as much. Central Parking, the company hired by RTD to run the pay-to-park program, has spent $487,000 through December, slightly over half the estimated cost.

RTD is not at risk for the $126,000 difference. Central Parking is responsible for it.

The main goal of the more limited program RTD eventually implemented isn’t to make money, but to shift parking demand from the high-usage lots where a lot of non-residents park to some of the lesser-used lots closer to town. As a result, most park-n-Rides remain free to non-residents.

The rationale behind the charges is that people who live and shop within the RTD district pay a one-percent sales tax that is the principle source of funding for bus and rail service. The parking fee is meant to recapture some of that subsidy from people not paying in to the RTD sales tax, and at the same time provide an incentive for people to go to the underutilized lots and spread the demand.

Still, RTD last year had projected modest net revenue of $200,000 a year

The primary reason is that parking demand at RTD lots was down 24 percent last year compared with the peak year of 2008 – when $4 gas helped fuel a surge in transit ridership. RTD’s comparison of usage at pay lots versus those that remain free for non-residents shows little difference, 24 percent at the pay lots versus 23 percent at the free ones. That indicates very little shifting in parking habits.

Another factor, RTD says, is that it hasn’t yet installed credit card terminals in the pay lots. Those should be fully functional by the end of April, and RTD believes more people will use the service then.

You can see the presentation on the program given to the RTD board Tuesday night by clicking here.

The program wasn’t expected to be a money maker for RTD. While initially it thought that a broadly based paid-parking program at transit lots could bring in up to $10 million for the RTD budget, resistance at the legislature – which had to pass a bill to authorize it – limited the scope of the fees.

As it turned out, the legislature allowed RTD a much more limited base of users to charge. People who don’t live within the boundaries of the eight-county district – larger in land area than the state of Rhode Island – can be charged daily, and district residents can be charged if they park for more than one day in a row while, for instance, using the skyRide airport bus service.

RTD estimated last year, based on its initial surveys of resident and non-resident parking, that only 12 percent of its parking patrons live outside the district.

RTD also allows riders to pay a monthly fee to reserve a parking space at crowded lots up until 10 a.m., which gives commuters who go to work later in the morning a chance to get parking at busy lots. But the reserved parking program has brought in only $18,000, six percent of what had been projected. It has proven popular only at the Littleton Downtown park-n-Ride, which is sold out.

RTD officials believe revenue will increase soon with implementation of credit-card payment capability at the lots. Currently operating on pre-paid or cash accounts, the use of credit cards will allow Central Parking to more effectively enforce the program because it provides an instant online verification of payment – or non-payment. There is a sliding scale of fines for violating the program. Central Parking circulates through each lot in the program on a daily basis with a license plate scanning system that alerts the enforcement officer if a vehicle is registered outside the RTD boundary and the owner hasn’t paid.

If you are unsure whether you live in the RTD district, you can go to the transit agency’s web site, type in your license plate and find out. RTD uses the state motor vehicle registration data base in real time, updated nightly.