Parking aplenty

Redwood City employs a system of high-tech parking meters by which you pay for street parking based on a number painted on the space or the nearby curb. These meters enable the city to easily adjust the cost of parking in different parts of downtown, thereby matching the supply of parking with demand (fortunately, the city very rarely adjusts its rates). For the price conscious, knowing where to park can make a big difference. Redwood City has a parking map on its website showing where the differing rates are (and where parking in general can be found); I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with it if, like me, you enjoy spending time downtown. You’ll find the map at https://www.redwoodcity.org/about-the-city/visiting/downtown-parking.

Some years ago Redwood City added occupancy sensors to its city-owned parking lots and garages, and added a number of electronic signs throughout downtown. The most visible signs are the large ones located near the primary street entrances to the downtown area, such as at the intersection of El Camino Real and Broadway, and on the Jefferson Avenue underpass beneath the Caltrain tracks. These signs list the city-owned parking lots and garages (along with at least one private garage available for public use during nights and weekends) and indicate the number of available spaces in each.

I love the idea of signs directing people to available parking, but the signs are only as good as the data they display. The two city-owned parking garages — beneath the Century Theatres, and on Marshall Street across from the downtown fire station — count cars as they enter and leave the garage; and, in the Jefferson Avenue garage, as they move between levels. Knowing how many cars have entered, and how many have exited, helps the system know how many parking spaces are likely to be available. Of course, the system can’t take into account people who park and occupy more than one space. Thus, when the indicated number of spaces gets low, consider giving that garage a miss.

In the two city-owned lots — by the library and in the center of the block bounded by Main Street, Broadway, Jefferson Avenue and Middlefield Road (the “Main Street Lot”) — cameras high up on poles throughout the lots attempt to determine how many parking spaces are actually available. From my experience, those cameras do not seem to be very accurate. Small electronic signs on those same poles indicate how many spaces appear to be available in the pole’s vicinity, but not only are the numbers often wrong, I suspect no one pays any attention to them anyway. Instead, people simply roam the lot, often in vain, looking for a place to park.

The large signs showing the total number of spaces that may or may not be available in the various lots and garages also assume you know the names of those lots and garages and where they are in relation to your destination. Some are clear: “Library Lots,” for example, can correctly be inferred to mean the parking lots on either side of, and behind, the downtown library (whether one knows just where the library is, though, remains an issue). But how many people know what “Marshall G” refers to, or how one gets to it? Personally, I use the Marshall Street garage quite a bit. This garage is immediately adjacent to Redwood City’s two-block section of Broadway that is closed to vehicles and lined almost entirely with restaurants. I know to head straight there, signs or no. If its full, I’m willing and able to park farther out, and walk.

I question how effective Redwood City’s electronic parking aids truly are, but I don’t question the city’s abundance of downtown parking. Just be prepared, on a busy night, to look for spaces farther from the center of downtown.