Staff from the Public Works and Planning departments worked with Walker Consultants to complete a parking needs assessment of the Central Business District (CBD) in 2019.

On June 8^th, 2020, city staff received the final report. And on June 10, 2020, city staff and Walker Consultants presented to the Finance, Governance and Public Safety Committee.

• View the presentation from June 10, 2020 
• The comprehensive final report will be available on this web page in the coming weeks.

CBD Parking Study Background

The overall goal was to improve the effectiveness of parking management and ensure that municipal parking resources are used in a manner that support public parking, public transit, multimodal transportation and CBD economic growth and development. With that goal in mind, city staff, Walker Parking, CBD stakeholders and members of the community worked together on identifying best practices to best serve the CBD community. We are committed to continue to work on Kansas City solutions to a nationwide challenge.

Findings

Walker Consultants identified a number of opportunities to implement improvements to the CBD. These findings will help KCMO understand future parking demand and how the City can be proactive in meeting the community’s parking needs. Findings demonstrate that there is no current need to build new parking and instead focus on improving access to the City’s supply of parking, while developing an asset management program that aligns on-street, off-street, and enforcement policy. For the future, the City should consider proactively supporting development through the current off-street parking and invest in current assets.

Recommendations include:

• Consolidating public parking management into a single organizational structure,
• Establishing financial performance budgets and capital asset plans,
• Developing and implementing a price management program for public parking assets, and
• Improving coordination amongst the various departments.

More general considerations include increased wayfinding and additional signage, facility counters, and planning policies to increase public parking access.