Tag: Ashland downtown parking

Team Ashland Learns to Count!

Posted on by Julia Havens

Coming to you live, from the streets of Ashland, Oregon is CPW (Community Planning Workshop) analyst Taylor Eidt.

cars-numbersThe “Ashland Sustainable Transportation Team” continues to move forward in its attempts to bring progressive planning strategies to the world, and more specifically the City of Ashland, Oregon. As it does so, these future planners constantly learn skills that will assist them in their future careers. One of these skills was honed on an April 9th trip to Ashland, which intended to develop concrete data with which the team can back up the policies they suggest to the Project Advisory Committee. What is this skill you may ask?

Counting.

On this particular trip, our objective was to count the number of cars parked in the Downtown Ashland area at multiple points throughout the day. This task was intended to obtain a definitive rate of occupancy for the Downtown area, allowing us to move forward with our policy options. While it may sound mundane and simple, counting parked cars under the beating sun of a beautiful 75-degree Ashland day is no easy task, and requires intense concentration and focus. This task required both personal and professional growth.

Team member Amanda D’Souza is confident that this “monitoring session gave an unparalleled opportunity,” for her to build upon her fieldwork and counting skills. While having previous knowledge of counting as a big Sesame Street fan, she viewed this as a chance to enhance these skills through new strategies such as “tally marks, finger-counting, and group addition.”

Team member Eli Tome walked nearly a mile during each counting rotation, resulting in a total of approximately three miles walked over the course of the day. By getting a ground level view of Ashland, Eli was able to combine healthy habits with fieldwork, while collecting data that is of extreme value to both the City and our study. Some members of the team found this work to be an opportunity to look into the soul of Ashland, such as Andrew Dutterer.

“While pounding the pavement conducting parking monitoring surveys in Ashland, one characteristic of the city that quickly became apparent was the pulse of ‘performance’ surging through the community. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is ubiquitous throughout downtown, from colorful banners adorning street lamps to crossing paths with an OSF actor that I had seen in a promotional brochure earlier that day. During monitoring loops through the Downtown Plaza I heard Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and a host of other musicians recreated in song by an assortment of guitar-clad street musicians. I even encountered two women dressed head-to-toe in Elizabethan costumes exit a building as though they had just stepped out of a time machine. The performance community in Ashland is strong, and it creates a lively and inspiring atmosphere throughout downtown. “

Now that you’re familiar with the strenuous activities of a day of fieldwork in the planning profession, it should be noted this post is not intended to scare any potential planners away from the profession. As team member Nestor Guevara states, this work provides many benefits when combined with other elements of this study, such as surveys, meetings, and the formulation of principals to guide our work.

“The City of Ashland has identified that there is a parking problem during peak tourism season (i.e. the Oregon Shakespeare Festival). Analyzing the parking patterns on an off-season, as we did in the April monitoring session, and comparing this data to previous data gathered during peak season, will help provide a clearer picture of the problem at hand.

The information gathered here today will be used to formulate new policies vetted by the Project Advisory Committee in the coming weeks.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of the “Ashland Sustainable Transportation Team’s” work in Ashland, as we continue to monitor the results of our second survey, examine parking policies of similar cities, analyze the amount of traffic generated by Ashland’s downtown businesses, and refine the policy options that will be recommended to the PAC!

Now it’s back to Bob Parker in the office for more on CPW’s top stories.

 

Taylor Eidt Ashland Sustainable Transportation CPW Community Planning WorkshopAbout the Author: Taylor Eidt is pursuing a master’s degree in Community & Regional Planning. Taylor is a native of Denver, Colorado by way of his undergraduate degree in Geography at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

A Clearer Parking Picture for Ashland

Posted on by Julia Havens

CPW Community Planning Workshop Ashland Sustainable TransportationMy Community Planning Workshop (CPW) team will be working on a variety of issues relating to parking, transportation, and the downtown area for the City of Ashland. There are a number of important aspects to the project, including data collection, analysis and public engagement.

A parking and transportation inventory has already been conducted for downtown Ashland over Labor Day weekend to determine the amount of parking spaces available, as well as turnover (the rate at which different cars park in the same spot). To compliment data collection efforts, we will visit Ashland on April 9 to conduct another parking monitoring session. The study will focus on occupancy analysis, meaning percent of the day the parking spaces are occupied. We will walk around the downtown area taking note of occupancy, and come back every two hours to note changes. Analyzing this parking data will provide a clearer picture for the parking problems in Ashland.

In terms of public engagement, the CPW group will be meeting monthly with a project advisory committee (PAC), as well as engaging the community through online surveys. The first survey was made available to the Ashland community in January and was kept open until mid-February. Perceptions about transportation, parking, downtown biking and pedestrian facilities, and the characteristics of the respondents were all gathered in the first survey. My team will create the second survey, which will focus on policy options for problems identified in the first survey. The purpose of the surveys is to gauge perceptions towards parking and transportation issues, and begin brainstorming policy options.

Once all data has been collected and analyzed, and the feedback incorporated, we will create a series of policy recommendations. These recommendations will range from short, mid, to long-term options. They will then be presented to the PAC for further evaluation.

The completion of this project will provide us in-depth experience in the planning field, while also letting us creating a product of professional quality.

 

Nestor Luis Guevara Delgado CPW Community Planning Workshop Ashland Sustainable Transportation About the Author: Originally from Puerto Rico, Nestor Luis Guevara Delgado moved to Pennsylvania for school and graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Geography from Pennsylvania State University in December 2012. He is currently a first year student in the Community and Regional Planning graduate program with an interest in Economic Development.