Tampa’s Transport Woes, Republican National Convention Edition

Plentiful, largely empty parking lots: an old Tampa Bay tradition (via pleasantfamilyshopping.blogspot.com).

August 22, 2012 — When they’re picking locations for their quadrennial national conventions, do the two major parties look for swing states, in hopes that bringing 50,000 party boffins into town will tilt voters in their favor? Do they look for a sympathetic home crowd – surely a factor when Democrats chose Los Angeles to host the 2000 DNC, or when Republicans picked Houston in 1992?

Or do they look for easy logistics – plenty of parking, easy access to giant convention centers, multiform transportation options?

If parking alone were a criterion, at first blush, Tampa Bay would make an excellent pick for the 2012 Republican National Convention. Salon.com’s article excoriating urban planning in Tampa points out that 50% of the downtown area is parking lot – surely a boon for any city expecting a large number of guests for a week, right?

Parking in Tampa is being reconfigured in preparation for events, and for security reasons, not even local property owners know how far the Secret Service cordon will stretch around the event until a few weeks before it happens (via MyParkingSign).

Except that there’s so much parking in Tampa that other transportation choices are difficult at best, and they’re not equipped to deal with large numbers. The HART network of buses – all that there is of Tampa’s forlorn and underused public transport system – is set to suffer from detours during the RNC, leaving it heading in other directions precisely when it could be most useful; pedestrianism in Tampa is perennially dicey.

As Tampa Bay Times reporter Katherine Snow Smith highlights, even plenty of parking doesn’t necessarily do local business owners any favors when there’s a sudden influx of visitors, and some businesses as far away as St. Petersburg are expecting major disruptions once the parade hits town. Ironically, Hillsborough County police are going to begin to deprioritize “traffic crashes” and “fender benders” over the week of the convention, which they expect will allow them to provide security at the event (regardless of how it affects traffic).

Even with 50%+ of its surface area covered by parking lots, Tampa is still facing serious transport disruptions during this year’s Republican National Convention via (wmnf.org).

So what’s with the lack of parking, closures, charges and advisories? Shouldn’t the local parking surfeit make it easier to accommodate the various state delegations and press, who are expected to number only a little over the 40,473-person capacity of Tropicana Field?

The Tampa Bay Times’s Richard Danielson reports that a Secret Service cordon creates some of the problem, but Donald Shoup might have some insight here – in The High Cost of Free Parking, Shoup argues that quantity has supplanted quality in urban planners’ minds when they’re building parking lots: “Planners focus almost exclusively on the ratio of parking spaces to floor area, and they neglect how all the required parking spaces affect urban design…”

On-street parking is being reduced during the RNC to facilitate a transport system that’s going to be stretched to the limits (via MyParkingSign).

One consequence: parking tends to beget parking needs, instead of the other way around, because the more parking lots a central business district has, the more difficult it is to walk from one place to another.

In any case, on-street parking will be nixed in some areas and made free in others, ostensibly to promote traffic flow and safety. Given its diffuse, pedestrian-hostile, public-transport-free urban fabric, Tampa is responding to its transport problem as best it can.

If recently elected Mayor Buckhorn’s plans for redeveloping Tampa’s urban core are any indicator, though, City Hall is well aware that the variety of Band-Aids being applied for the 2012 Republican National Convention are just that. Tighter, more efficient parking with high turnover may ultimately contribute to a more lasting solution.

– C. Lumm

Category: News, No Parking, Regulations