"[Managed] Park[ing at the Alameda Aquatic Center] Makes Live Better"

Dear Planning Board members (with a CC to Planning and ARPD staff),

Tonight's PB meeting covers the city's plans for the next 5 years of climate change adaptations and mitigations; the city's progress over the last year toward our transportation and traffic safety goals; and the city's aquatic center.

My comment concerns this final item — the city's new aquatics center — and how ARPD's plans and approach are not yet in alignment with the former two topics — the CARP and the city's transportation plans.

The aquatic center will hopefully draw swimmers from across Alameda, as well as from around the greater East Bay. The city's choice of swimming pool configurations, as well as ARPD's consultants modeling of cost recovery, are aiming to maximize usage. That's great — the more users for the aquatic center, the better! However, planning for how people will travel to the aquatic center does not appear to be considered as systematically. Ideally ARPD would be just as thorough in planning to get as many people as possible to the aquatic center via foot, bike, transit, and carpooling. It's this process of modal shift that is key to us meeting our carbon reduction targets for the next 5 years of the CARP.

Simply placing the aquatic center next to the Cross Alameda trail will not automatically address this challenge — especially given that ARPD is proposing to turn a portion of the Jean Sweeney Open Space Park into free/unmanaged parking for drivers.

Please consider advising ARPD to:

1. Hire a TDM (transportation demand management) consultant or direct existing consultants also approach the project specifically from a TDM perspective. This is a required task for larger projects by private developers bringing projects to the city — ideally the city would also do the same with its own project. A TDM plan would be a more holistic perspective on how people travel to and from the aquatic center, rather than the consultants' current approach that appears to focus solely on the confines of the site plan.
2. Evaluate managed (paid) parking both in terms of operations and cost recovery models. Building off-street parking can be a lose-lose-lose proposition when it's simply offered to everyone for free: It will cost the city money to build, it will give up park space, and it may never satisfy drivers who still won't be able to find a spot to park at peak times. Instead, if ARPD actively manages parking, it can be a more productive proposition: a modest price on parking encourages biking/walking/transit for those who can; a price on parking would also provide ARPD another source of revenue for the complex (potentially reducing the ticket cost to the public for swim center entrance or activities); and a price on parking would give ARPD means to actively manage how various users access the western half of the park (for example, ARPD could give the Alameda Backyard Growers group a preset number of free parking permits each month, to enable them to access the parking lot near the proposed garden plots even at peak times).
3. Coordinate with other city departments to install the proposed crosswalk across Atlantic Ave in advance of the aquatic center The renderings appear to label that feature  as "future crosswalk/not in contract"

At this PB meeting, you'll be hearing about how the Cross Alameda Trail is nearly complete, and you'll be hearing about how the CARP's goal of reducing motor vehicle trips is proposed to reduce 17,307 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year (at and after 2030). Please consider this input on how the city can use its major investment into building a public aquatic center that will hopefully last decades to leverage — rather than undercut — these active transportation facilities and climate goals.

Thanks for your time!