Myrtle Beach looks at limiting parking in Golden Mile

The city unveiled a proposal Tuesday morning to alleviate some of the parking woes along “The Golden Mile,” which leaders say have posed safety risks to residents, pedestrians, motorists and bicyclists.

Recommendations include limiting parallel parking spaces to one side of Ocean Boulevard and street ends that would fetch higher prices in a bid to encourage out-of-town visitors to park in cheaper downtown lots.

But a couple of “Golden Mile“ residents asked the city Tuesday for no parking on the boulevard, or at least for the west-side parking to be limited to city residents. That move, city leaders say, would make a bad parking problem on the boulevard worse for the avenues.

A four-lane section of Ocean Boulevard between 31st Avenue North and 53rd Avenue North, lined with residential houses along a stretch of beachfront property known as “The Golden Mile” becomes a traffic nightmare in the busy tourist season. With parked cars lining both sides of the boulevard, city engineer Ryan Harvey said the four travel lanes are whittled down to two.

The stretch on its busiest day is estimated to host as many as 557 cars abutting driveways and street ends that hamper safe traffic visibility.

“This creates a problem that traffic can only go in one lane in each direction,” Harvey told the Myrtle Beach City Council at a workshop Tuesday morning. “It made it unsafe for people trying to pull out of the avenues and their driveways. It’s also created a problem for pedestrians walking, people getting out of their cars when they park on Ocean Boulevard and bicyclists were having to merge in with the traffic.”

Harvey said they formed a team to look at the issue with the city’s police and public works departments, the Downtown Redevelopment Commission and Lanier Parking. The team suggested the city turn the four-lane stretch of road into two lanes lined on each side with dedicated bike lanes, and lower the speed limit from 35 to 25 mph. Crosswalks would be added for pedestrians at each intersection.

For parking, the team recommended the city eliminate parking on the east side of the boulevard and organize the west side with about 190 parallel spaces, pushed back from driveways and street ends to promote safe traffic visibility. The spaces would demand higher prices to park for non-city residents.

The team estimated there were about 340 designated street-end parking spaces in the area, which would also reap the higher parking fees from non-city residents.

But the gap in parking on Ocean Boulevard would leave the city to look elsewhere for the 367 parking spaces that have clogged the roadway in seasons past.

City council members have expressed concerns that limiting parking on the boulevard would push the parking woes to the avenues.

Harvey said they looked at that option and expanded their study area to 82nd Avenue North. The team suggested the city allow parking on the avenues only for city residents with parking decals and only between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. from May 15-Sept. 15.

Harvey said they recommend the city prohibit parking along Beach Drive and encourage day trippers to park in downtown lots, creating a special discounted parking system for county residents.

Under the proposed system, county residents could purchase a parking decal for the season at $100 – good for discounts at specific downtown parking lots, Harvey said.

The team also recommended finding other remote surface parking lots where visitors can park, which may require a shuttle service to designated street ends and public beach accesses, he said.

“We believe about 80 percent of the people on a busy day that are parking on ‘The Golden Mile’ are not city residents,” said City Manager John Pedersen. “So our incentive is to try to encourage them to go downtown and park instead. The way that we will do that will be by having parking for a fee … along Ocean Boulevard and street ends at about 150 percent of the rate that’s downtown.

“The whole idea is to provide financial incentives for people to relocate their parking preferences.”

Spaces along Ocean Boulevard and street ends in “The Golden Mile” would fetch $3 an hour or $15 per day from 9 a.m. to midnight. City residents with decaled cars could continue to park for free in any space.

Sue Hudgins, who lives in “The Golden Mile,” said the area is flooded the most with cars and traffic when schools break for the summer.

“In order maybe to help the avenue issue, it might be worthwhile to try to have parking on the west side limited to residents only,” she said.

Jill Griffith, who lives on a west-side corner of Ocean Boulevard and one of its intersecting avenues, said she wasn’t looking forward to the prospects of parking signs and lines of people in front of her house.

“If we’re going to do this, let’s do it,” she said, asking for the council to eliminate parking altogether. “I don’t want you to forget that ultimately it’s a residential neighborhood.”

Griffith recommended a shuttle service may be the best way to bring people to the beach.

Harvey said they looked at eliminating parking altogether on Ocean Boulevard but found it would require extra signage, additional law enforcement, create a hardship for residents of other city neighborhoods and contradict the city’s goal of making sure the beach is accessible to all.

Harvey estimated the project could cost a total of $53,000 to implement.

City council members varied in opinions on the matter, some wanting to proceed as planned and others wanting to scale the project back or tackle it in phases. But they agreed to let the city move forward with meetings with neighbors in the area to talk about the proposals.

The council is set to consider the project for a possible vote in April.

This story was originally published February 23, 2016 at 8:05 PM with the headline "Myrtle Beach looks at limiting parking in Golden Mile."