Parking Changes Coming to Wichita
Posted on August 26, 2024 by Ching under Community.
I’m taking a break from catching up this super behind blog to talk about the parking changes that are coming to downtown Wichita in 2025. A few weeks ago someone posted about the parking changes because the changes that were being implemented on January 1 were extending beyond just downtown. It was also impacting Delano district. Delano is where the Senior Services of Wichita and Seneca Park (across the street) is located. They were concerned about how the parking changes would impact parking in the area and how this would create a hardship for seniors, not just financially but also because we all know that many seniors are technologically-changed.
When I saw that there were a couple of meetings at Senior Services and one of them was at 5 PM on a Thursday, I decided to attend that one. I had to reschedule a waxing appointment to do so but I had to know what was going on. I stole the photos below from the Senior Services Facebook page and they are from the Monday morning meeting. They’re better than my photo from Thursday so I decided to use theirs instead.
Assistant City Manager Troy Anderson came to address the group, which mostly consisted of people who are very upset about the parking changes. As you would expect, the people in the community in favor of the changes or those who are indifferent, didn’t really feel a need to attend. I fall under the indifferent category and mostly attended out of curiosity.
In all other cities that Brian and I have visited, we’ve had to pay for parking in the downtown areas, so I am neither surprised nor against the idea of paying for parking. It seemed to me that the parking rates/fees would be reasonable and that the monies collected would go toward maintenance and upkeep of parking and would benefit the immediate area overall so I don’t mind having to pay. As a consumer my main concern was whether it would be convenient, e.g. will there be an app and multiple options to pay for parking because if it’s a pain in the neck then, no matter how cheap it is, people will be discouraged from going to the area just because they won’t want to mess with parking.
As a pickleball player, another concern I had is of the impact to parking around Seneca Park. It’s currently free to park all around the park and also along the street in front of Senior Services. None of the information I had seen showed that this area would be affected by the parking changes but I wanted to know for sure.
Anyway, let’s share some background information first. Here’s a parking report presented by Health ICT back in 2018.
Troy also mentioned this video about the high cost of free parking which supports the notion of moving towards charging for parking in certain areas of the city. Having traveled to other places where paid parking is now the norm, I completely understand why the city wants to move in this direction; however, it’s been really nice having free parking available in our city.
At the meeting at Senior Services on Thursday, we got to see a sample parking payment kiosk and we got to see the maps of impacted areas.
The map above depicts the area that they’re looking to implement paid parking starting on January 1. The picture below is a closer look at Delano. It looks like paid parking will be mostly along Douglas and there might be some paid parking along Walnut, Handley, Osage, Oak, and Sycamore also (but I’m not quite sure what all the color-coding actually means).
It looks like the area around Seneca Park will be largely unaffected; however, I am worried that people who don’t want to pay for parking along Douglas and Walnut will end up parking on the street along Seneca Park and walk to wherever they’re going thus, making parking more limited for pickleball players who frequent the park. It’s possible but we don’t really know for sure what will happen and how people will behave until they implement the changes. I do know there are quite a few people who are vehemently against the idea and they were quite vocal at the meeting I attended last week.
There is another meeting happening tonight at Nortons Brewing Co. If you are at all interested in the changes that are coming, I highly recommend attending.
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