North Myrtle Beach leaders are ready to move forward with some ideas they hope will help with parking this summer. Wednesday afternoon a consultant the city hired presented some solutions to help with some parking headaches in the city.
After seeing what was in the proposal, city council members said they were ready to move forward with extending 10 beachfront parking lots. A lot of the lots have extra landscaping along the sides, and the plan is to trim that up and maximize the parking spaces. Several of the lots also have areas on the beach end that could legally be flatten more with any vegetation removed. That would also create more parking spaces. The city leaders hope they will pick up about 212 parking spaces throughout the city at the 10 beachfront lots.
Council members said they are also ready to implement a paid parking program in all public parking lots in the city on either side of Ocean Boulevard. increase in paid parking along ocean boulevard to two dollars per hour and perhaps a little less in blocks away from ocean boulevard.
A press release from the city included the following details:
“The target date to begin the paid parking program is June 15, 2019. The paid parking fee is $2 per hour. The paid parking program will utilize an App, enabling users to pay for parking time via cell phones in the same manner that people now pay to park in the four existing paid parking lots in the city. Additional details will be forthcoming.”
The city will also create a residential permit system to allow property owners in the city to avoid the parking fees. Council members discussed limiting the permits to one per household, and the consultants mentioned that the program could be run with technology that would allow multiple cars to use a signle household permit. However, only one car per household would be allowed to be in a city lot at any one time.
“We came out of this workshop with a lot of good ideas that we will implement immediately and be ready for our summer season,” commented -Mayor Marilyn Hatley.
One other option that was on the table was building a parking garage in the city, but for now that is not something they are moving forward with. Also, the city will no longer allow people to park in the median of Ocean Boulevard.
The city council also expressed interest in creating a shuttle service from a non-oceanfront parking lot within the city. City manager Mike Mahaney said he would be working on the logistics of creating that service, perhaps with trolleys or buses, running June 15 to August 15 of this year. Council members said they wanted to give the shuttle service a try and after the first year they could decide if they want to continue that option in future years.
The city will also collect data about parking over the summer, with plans to use that date to guide future short-term and long-term public parking solutions.
