Council advances parking action plan: daylighting intersections, short-term limits at Home Ranch and conceptual mobility-hub study

Town and county transportation staff presented a data-driven update to a downtown parking and mobility action plan at the Town Council workshop on Sept. 15, and the council voted unanimously to advance a package of near-term priorities including intersection daylighting, limited stays at a large off-street lot, continued evaluation of data and technology strategies, and a conceptual design study for a multimodal mobility hub at Home Ranch.

Charlotte Fry, the town/county transportation manager, told the council that the parking garage’s final testing was expected around Sept. 30 and that staff sees parking management as one of the town’s strongest levers to influence travel behavior and reduce “cruising” for parking that contributes to congestion and emissions. “Parking is the longest lever local governments have to influencing travel behavior,” Fry said.

What staff found: In August 2024 staff walked roughly 90 hours and collected turnover and occupancy data in downtown off-street lots and at Home Ranch. Among the 23 standard stalls sampled at Home Ranch during a weekday survey, staff counted 76 unique license plates; the average stay across all plates was about three hours, and average stays for Wyoming-plated vehicles were longer (about six and a half hours in the sampled stalls), suggesting a mix of employee and longer-term uses in the lot. Fry and Travel Demand Manager Miles Contreras emphasized that a 70–85% occupancy threshold is used to indicate when cruising and constraint become problematic, and their mapping shows substantially higher utilization in 2024 than in 2018 for many off-street lots.

Daylighting and safety: Miles Contreras explained an intersection daylighting effort to improve visibility by removing parking within the statutory clearance near intersections. Wyoming law requires no parking within 20 feet of intersections with traffic control signals; the staff motion prioritizes five high-entry intersections for immediate daylighting work in 2025 (Jackson & Kelly; Jackson & Deloney; Jackson & Broadway; Berlin & Glenwood; Cache & Broadway) and a broader program for high-injury-network locations in 2026. Staff warned that painting curbs is straightforward but moving existing sign posts and bases is more labor- and cost-intensive.

Recommended actions and implementation: Staff recommended advancing four actions from the 2019 Downtown Parking Management and Mobility Plan and continuing to evaluate others. The near-term package approved by council includes: - Implement priority daylighting (20-foot intersection clearance) at five intersections in 2025 and rollout of 58 additional locations on the high-injury network in 2026. - Advance short-term parking priority in the town core (target: 3 hours or fewer) and implement a three-hour limit at Home Ranch as an option to shift employee/long-stay parking to the garage and free curbside space for customers and short visits. - Initiate a conceptual design study for a Home Ranch mobility hub that would integrate multimodal access, transit, and additional parking capacity (potentially structured), and evaluate feasibility, costs and funding.

Costs and funding: Fry presented preliminary per-space cost estimates for structured parking of roughly $45,000–$50,000 per space and cautioned that seismic/engineering needs could raise per-space costs. Staff said they had applied for a Federal Transit Administration (FTA) 5339 grant for design and for a separately named rural assistance grant (grant program name not fully specified in the presentation) to help fund design and feasibility. Staff also said technology for real-time monitoring would reduce labor intensity of annual occupancy surveys and support dynamic pricing, enforcement and winter-parking decisions.

Public comment: Resident Daniel Ragsdale urged the council to implement paid parking and to eliminate off-street parking mandates, arguing that market-priced parking and removal of minimum parking requirements would reduce cruising, pollution and housing costs.

Council response and vote: Councilors asked clarifying questions about enforcement capacity, where displaced vehicles would park if Home Ranch were timed, and whether demand management could avoid structured-parking costs. Members emphasized adaptive management — implementing near-term, reversible changes while collecting data to decide next steps. Councilor Beeman moved the staff recommendation and the council voted unanimously in favor.

Ending: Council asked staff to return with implementation details and recommended workshop follow-ups in the next quarter; staff flagged that some timeline items (winter restrictions, technology deployment) will require additional analysis and potential budget or grant funding before full implementation.