Residential Parking Permit Analysis

April 18th, 2018

In April 2015, City Council requested that the Allentown Parking Authority prepare a comprehensive analysis of all existing Residential Parking Permit zones. The impetus for this request was a request by a resident of Zone Four to allow for expansion along Walnut Street. Instead of granting a single request, Council opted to request an analysis of all zones to determine whether other potential expansion opportunities exist. Authority staff offered to have this analysis completed within 90 days.

Staff initially conducted a physical inventory of all legal parking spots within each zone and made note of ‘no parking’ zones for potential reconsideration. We then noted obvious commercial activity on each block and conducted a sign inventory on applicable blocks to ensure accuracy. While this field work was being conducted, office staff reviewed the number of issued permits by zone, tallied the number of residents requesting to establish a new permit within each zone, and reviewed applicable ticket issuance by zone (*). (*) Ticket issuance analysis proved to be not valuable to this process.

A review of the compilation of the data resulting from the above efforts was then conducted. This review allowed staff to assign priority levels to each zone.