PACKET EDITORIAL, April 13
By: Packet Editorial
One of the great mysteries that has confounded every Princetonian we know over the years is how those Palmer Square parking garages have managed to stay in business.
Charging astronomically high fees, and reporting correspondingly low occupancy rates, the garages seem to have defied the law of supply and demand. While metered spots on the street and in borough-owned lots are precious commodities, battled over by nickel-, dime- and quarter-toting parkers from dawn to dusk, spaces in the two Palmer Square lots stand idle all day long, spurned and scorned by the cost-conscious motoring public.
Seasoned Princeton parkers would rather drive around the central business district for hours in search of an available meter or a spot in the Park & Shop lot than ever part with the kind of money it takes to park in one of the Palmer Square garages. It’s a matter of principle. And pride. And economics.
The rates at the Palmer Square garages start high ($1 for the first half-hour) and gradually decrease. The rates at the Park & Shop lot start low (50 cents for the first half-hour) and gradually rise. The rates at meters are a flat 75 cents an hour, scheduled to go up to $1 an hour in the central business district if and when the state Department of Transportation ever gets around to approving the increase.
In other words, the rate structure in the private lots discourages short-term parking while the rate structure at meters and in public lots encourages it. That’s why you can never find a spot on the street but you can always find one in the Palmer Square garages except on the occasional weekend when there’s a special event or a big bash at the Nassau Inn that draws a crowd of out-of-towners willing to pay through the nose for off-street parking. Then the "Lot Full" signs come out, and there is no place to park in Princeton at all.
All that could change soon and everyone who ever has done the standard Nassau Street-Witherspoon Street-Spring Street-Vandeventer Avenue circuit (or the more daring Nassau Street-Palmer Square East-Hulfish Street-Palmer Square West loop) looking in vain for a parking space may be in store for some blessed relief. The Palmer Square garages are launching a Value Pass program, a discounted parking plan that would offer as much as a 50-percent break for downtown employees and 20-percent or 30-percent discount for more transient parkers.
Like the EZ Pass, the Value Pass would come in the form of a pre-paid card, which would entitle the user to a discounted rate when parking in a Palmer Square garage. For employees of downtown businesses, this should be especially appealing. Not only will the discounted rate make the cost of parking at the Palmer Square garages competitive with public parking; it also will mean an end to the unpleasant ritual of leaving the office every couple of hours to feed the meter before another $18 ticket lands on the windshield.
The hope is that this could have a trickle-down effect. The more employees and regular downtown visitors use the Value Pass to park at the Palmer Square garages, the more spots become available on the street and in borough-owned lots. The more these spots become available, the more attractive downtown Princeton becomes to the consumer who has the choice of going to a Route 1 mall where there’s plenty of parking. The more consumers are attracted to Princeton’s central business district, the better it is for commerce, for the vitality of the downtown and for the overall economic health of the community (i.e. property values). Everybody wins.
That, at least, is the theory. We’ll see soon enough how it all works out in practice. In the meantime, Palmer Square Management has earned a special place in the hearts of beleaguered Princeton parkers.