A Policy Assessment of Duluth's Downtown Parking Program

Abstract

Duluth, like many medium-sized cities, has faced a parking problem in their downtown area. Since 1981 Duluth has struggled with this problem. In November of that year the Mayor's Parking Task Force reported that the downtown area had 6,000 total spaces--4,500 available for long-term parking and 1,500 short-term spaces. Several of the privately operated parking ramps appeared to have excess capacity even though retail and service business expressed concern about the lack of short-term customer parking. The Mayor's committee recommended that the city institute a Free Downtown Duluth Short-Term Parking Program. The program would be financed by a special property tax assessment to raise the estimated $250,000 per year to implement the program. This paper attempts to evaluate the proposed program.