Mayor Eric Papenfuse, holding scissors, at a ribbon-cutting for the Pango mobile parking app last year.
Harrisburg motorists are about to be part of Mayor Eric Papenfuse’s grand parking gamble.
The wager? That reduced happy hour prices and free parking on Saturdays will draw more parkers downtown, offsetting the damage to local businesses from a rate hike that began last year.
The stakes? About $285,000 in public money.
That’s the amount the city will pledge, pending a City Council vote Wednesday night, to make up for lost revenues in the event reduced prices don’t attract more drivers.
“We’re going to experiment with a theory we have…which says that basically, if we lower rates, then maybe more people will come to park,” Papenfuse said. “And we certainly believe that that will hopefully be the case.”
The money for the experiment will be allocated from a city account holding unspent county hotel tax dollars from 2014. Hotel taxes, which come from a countywide 5-percent levy on overnight lodging, are split between the county, the city and the tourism bureau for the purpose of promoting regional tourism.
If council agrees to the allocation, happy hour parking prices, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, will be lowered from $3 to $2 per hour beginning April 1.
Additionally, drivers will be able to get four free hours of parking on Saturdays by using the promotional code “LUVHBG” on a mobile parking app, beginning April 4.
The city will sponsor the free hours for drivers using the Pango app, which allows people to purchase and renew parking remotely by phone for a small fee.
For drivers using the “LUVHBG” code, which can also be entered as the number 588424, Pango will waive the fee as well as validate the four hours of parking, making the hours “truly free,” Papenfuse said.
Papenfuse discussed the proposal at a press conference Wednesday morning in city hall, where he described the changes as a response to customer complaints about increased rates and longer hours.
“Why are we doing this? Because we have listened,” Papenfuse said.
Trimont Real Estate Advisors, the parking system’s new manager under a long-term lease signed in 2013, also announced several initiatives on Wednesday to improve customer experience and attract more parkers.
One is a “rebranding” of parking officers as “ambassadors,” under a program that Standard Parking, the parking operator under the lease, has employed in other cities.
The “ambassadors” will be specially trained with knowledge of city events and locations, will wear “Ask Me” buttons to encourage the public to approach them, and will carry city maps and other informational material for handing out to visitors.
The operators also plan to implement a five-minute grace period before officers will ticket a car whose time has expired. The grace period is currently being tested and should take effect in the next two weeks, said John Gass, a director at Trimont.
A third program is a lunchtime discount program at the River Street garage, where weekday drivers will be able to pay $3 for up to two hours of parking, as long as they enter the garage after 11:30 a.m. and leave by 1:30 p.m.
On weekends, the program will allow drivers to pay $3 for up to four hours of parking, as long as they enter after 11 a.m. and leave by 3 p.m.
The lunchtime pricing reflects a steep discount on usual rates, which at the River Street garage are normally $8 for two hours and $12 for four hours.
The program is planned to take effect by May, pending the installation of new automated exits and entrances.
The initiatives, which are the first of several to be implemented in the coming years, should help show the parking system is “responsive to public comments,” Gass said.
Harrisburg leased its parking system in late 2013 as part of a state-sponsored plan to pull city finances from the brink of bankruptcy.
The system saw worse-than-expected returns its first year, in part because a long winter led to delays in installing new meters. The fourth quarter saw a shortfall in projected revenues of about $750,000, according to unaudited 2014 financials.
The approved 2015 budget projects $22.5 million in total revenues, with a tiny surplus, around $75,000, left over after all expenses.
Partly for that reason, the city had to put up money to guarantee that any rate changes would not hurt revenues. Nonetheless, Papenfuse said Wednesday he was confident the lower rates would attract enough drivers to cover the city’s wager.
The $285,000 figure represents the city’s “total exposure,” he said, reflecting how much revenue the system would lose if the lower rates attracted no new drivers.
Gass agreed. “We think we have very conservative assumptions at this point,” he said. “The $285,000 is truly a worst-case number.”
