Here’s an interesting question: Why not enforce downtown parking restrictions into the evening hours rather than cutting off meter fees and other parking limits at 5 p.m.?

While it obviously wouldn’t be a popular move, extending parking enforcement until 10 p.m. or midnight makes a certain amount of sense for Lawrence. All of the justifications for parking meters and two-hour parking limits during the day also exist during the evening hours:

• There is just as much — if not more — demand for parking spaces after 5 p.m. Before 5, parking is in demand for people wanting to shop and do business downtown. Although the number of shoppers downtown may decrease after 5, the demand for people wanting to dine out or attend an event increases greatly. If the goal is to churn parking and make spaces more available for visitors, that need is just as important at night as it is during the day.
• One of the main goals of parking restrictions downtown, according to city officials, is to push employees into longer-term parking lots on the edge of downtown. Downtown dining and entertainment venues also have many employees and, although there may be fewer downtown employees after 5, it still would be better if they parked in fringe lots and allowed customers the prime metered spots.
• Enforcement is an issue at night, but no greater than during the day. If the city can afford to pay someone to write parking tickets during the day, it could do the same at night. If officials have any concerns about the safety of such an officer at night, perhaps they need to re-evaluate the overall evening law enforcement downtown. If an officer wouldn’t be safe, neither would the other people visiting downtown.
• Evening enforcement would be inconvenient for some people who live downtown, but the city already encourages downtown residents who don’t have private parking to buy permits to park in long-term lots, and that wouldn’t change.

The city currently is considering significant increases in both parking fines and fees. Officials say people who pay meters would be willing to pay more and that current fines for overtime parking aren’t high enough to deter people from overparking at meters or in restricted lots. Again, one goal of raising fines and fees would be to encourage employees to parking in 10-hour lots rather than prime spaces.

The underlying motivation for the city, of course, is to increase revenue, which again raises the issue of extended enforcement hours. Even with the costs of increased enforcement, would evening fines and fees pay off both in terms of city revenue and in terms of providing more convenient parking for downtown visitors?

Twenty or 30 years ago, Downtown Lawrence was mostly a 9-to-5 area of businesses and retail stores. Demand for parking and the need for parking enforcement dropped off dramatically when retail stores and offices closed for the evening. Now that downtown is an active evening entertainment destination, that has changed. It’s an interesting idea that perhaps the city also should adjust its parking enforcement strategy to match the evolution of downtown.