Updated! WANTED: Independent Parking Consultant for Long Beach

The City of Long Beach issued its RFP (Request For Proposals) for the parking study. This is an opportunity to find someone out there who can bring innovative approaches to the problem! While this photo shows a parking garage, we've learned about many other solutions that would likely be recommended first. Newer parking plans make sure existing parking is used efficiently before building parking.

We continue to be concerned that the City wants only traditional solutions. In the past, we've been told we must work "within the City's toolbox and policies". The problem with that is that some of those policies are making the parking worse and other policies are preventing improvements. We need to make sure the potential consultants understand that we are looking for outside-the-box approaches that might provide good solutions. If any parking consultants are reading this, we have lots of info about this area that we can share with you!

TAPS sent our comments to the City of Long Beach on it's proposed RFP, which we were allowed to do as part of our lawsuit settlement. TAPS gathered advice from Mike Kodama (parking consultant), our attorneys Jamie T Hall and Julian Quattlebaum, and knowledgeable TAPS volunteers before commenting on the RFP.

The City did make some changes to the RFP to satisfy our concerns. They did not include a requirement that the parking study include meetings for public input. We hope this will occur even though it's not in the RFP. The processes for the Bicycle Plan and the Pedestrian Plan both had considerable public input events.

The deadline for inquiries is February 13; proposal deadline is March 17. The consultant will be selected on or before April 27.