Iowa City City Council Votes to Require Permits for Moped Parking in Pedestrian Mall

The Iowa City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to add more moped and scooter parking in the Pedestrian Mall, requiring $45 a pop for an annual permit to use this parking.

This is a change from the current system, which allows moped users to park their mopeds at bike stands. The council members said they were motivated to make the change after receiving complaints from bicyclists that the mopeds took up too much bike parking space.

The new permit system requires two more votes before it will be established in January, 2012.

Chris O'Brien, director of parks and transportation services for the city, addressed the city council Tuesday night, saying complaints about the mopeds began three or four years ago when gas prices started rising. O'Brien said the original law, which allows scooters to park in bike racks, began when mopeds literally had pedals.

"(There has been a) continual increase of usage in the amount of mopeds, scooters and those types of two-wheel transportation, to the point that we started receiving complaints from bicyclists about bike racks being full of scooters and the mopeds, and from some pedestrians about safety concerns with those vehicles being on sidewalks," he said.

A Johnson County study in the fall of 2010 found an average of 80 mopeds parked in the sidewalks during business hours, O'Brien said.

The best solution for this problem was the $45 per year, monthly pro-rated permit system that allows parking in designated areas and covers the cost of maintenance, permits and administration fees, O'Brien told the council during a special meeting.

"We thought a five dollar per month fee for parking in these areas was something that would be reasonable and those other three months would be included in case there were days that they could be ridden and people could certainly ride (if they chose to do so) in that time," he said.

With 80 scooters displacing 160 bikes, adding bike racks to the tune of $500 a piece wasn't an option, according to Metropolitan Planning Organization of Johnson County Executive Director John Yapp.

"We running out of room to add bike racks to the downtown area with out starting to impact the pedestrians," he said.

"What the permit will give you is a VIP student parking in designated areas," Yapp said. "You're not required to get a permit and if you don't have a permit you can still park at any metered spot."

Councilor Connie Champion said her biggest concern was the mopeds driving on the sidewalks, but that the parking should be free and not require a permit.

The option of no permitting and simply striping the parking spots for scooters would cost about $1,000, O'Brien said.

Councilors Susan Mims, Mike Wright and Regenia Bailey swayed to Champion's side, but ultimately joined other members in deciding the permit system would make up for the loss in city revenue to establish the spots.

The loss of five or six regular parking spots that will be relinquished for the extra moped parking equals a loss of about $7 per day, according to O'Brien, who added the information of registered moped drivers, which the University requires for their permit parking system, was also valuable.

"Having them registered, you gather that data so you have names, addresses, ways to send bills, for example ways to send citations," O'Brien said.

People riding scooters can still choose to bypass the permitted parking areas and park in any of the metered parking areas downtown.

If passed, the proposed 142 new parking stalls for moped permits will run from beginning August 1 to July 31 and cover a designated area throughout the downtown and parking ramps near campus.

"What we tried to do is look at the places where the congestion was," O'Brien said, adding some of the bigger areas they would add the permitted areas were at the corner of Clinton and Iowa Avenues, Capitol and Washington Avenues and Dubuque Street and Iowa Avenue.

"We're trying not to displace but to create a more organized system for them to park so that we can remove them where the bicyclists are and pedestrians, yet still provide the capacity that they had prior to this," he said.