The Vermont Street downtown parking garage near Lawrence Public Library is seen from the side in this file photo from November 2014.

Brad Harrell calls the garages, meters, sawtooth spots and surface lots in downtown Lawrence the city’s “parking ecosystem.” And, like any good ecologist, he knows that small changes can have big effects.

Take, for instance, changing the cost of a parking ticket from $5 to $10.

Before Lawrence did that in 2021, Harrell, the city’s parking manager, said the city was issuing around 100,000 parking tickets per year. But when the change was made, the effect was immediate: The number of citations dropped to about 60,000 a year.

When you’re trying to cycle visitors in and out of downtown spots, fund millions of dollars in infrastructure projects and serve the growing number of people living in and around downtown, these changes matter. And Harrell and his department are now considering a few more: raising parking fees and fines again, expanding the hours of parking enforcement and creating a new residential parking permit program.

Across downtown, the city manages three parking garages, 14 parking lots and over 1,300 on-street parking spots for a total of 2,602 spots. When you feed a meter or pay through the app — or pay a parking ticket — that money goes into the city’s parking fund, which pays for infrastructure improvements.

“Small things like that add up to the cost of providing parking,” Harrell said.

The new proposals, which were part of a study done by the department and Walker Consultants and could be implemented in the 2026 budget process, could add up to an additional $818,000 a year for the parking fund. And that money would be important as the department tries to pay for more than $4 million in deferred maintenance that the city’s parking structures will need over the next decade — and accommodate the increase in visitors, residents and cars from new downtown developments.

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photo by: Screenshot from the City of Lawrence’s Youtube page

Brad Harrell, the city’s parking manager is pictured on May 21, 2024, at the Lawrence City Commission meeting at City Hall.

On a Monopoly board, Free Parking doesn’t do much. But in downtown Lawrence, it plays a big role in the parking system.

Just over half of all parking downtown is free for at least the first two hours, Harrell said. That includes the top two levels of the city’s long-term parking garages, which are free for 10 hours. The initial idea was that those could be for the workers at downtown businesses, but that’s “not been what it’s used for,” Harrell said.

With so much parking being free to use, one simple money-making idea would be to just start charging a fee for more of that space. And Harrell said the city had indeed explored the option of eliminating free parking in downtown Lawrence — converting all the two-hour and 10-hour free spaces to spaces that cost $0.50 an hour.

But he also said that’s not the preferred solution. Instead, it’s more likely the city will look at increasing rates on downtown spaces outside of Massachusetts Street.

Currently, for long-term meters, the cost is 20 cents an hour, and short-term meters cost $1 per hour. Off-street parking can cost between 20 cents and $1 per hour, with a $2 daily maximum. The study suggests increasing the cost for long-term meters to 50 cents an hour, and increasing the daily maximum cost for an off-street garage spot to $5.

The study compared Lawrence’s current parking rates to those in “peer cities,” including Olathe, Overland Park, Topeka, Wichita and Manhattan, as well as a few outside of Kansas, such as Ames, Iowa, and Columbia, Missouri. Harrell said Lawrence’s rates are lower than many of the peer cities, and the rates used to be “substantially lower” than they are now. When he started at the city in 2018, the parking rate for long-term meters was 10 cents an hour, short-term meters were 50 cents an hour, and parking garages had a maximum cost of a dollar a day.

In addition to raising fees, the study also suggested increasing fines for parking violations from the current $10 to $15. The city saw that big drop in citations with the previous increase in 2021, and Harrell said the city believes increasing the fine again will have a similar effect and “continue the overall goal of promoting turnover” in downtown parking spots.

A few other changes that the study explored include enforcing parking rules between 6 and 9 p.m. and implementing a “progressive pricing” model for parking on Massachusetts Street and the 100 blocks of the numbered streets in downtown. The progressive model would require installing new parking meter technology, but it would also allow the city to charge higher and higher rates for each successive hour of parking. For instance, a presentation from the department to the Lawrence City Commission said the rates would start at $1 per hour for the first two hours. Then, the third hour might be $2, the fourth $3 and so on, meaning that parking on Mass. Street for four hours would cost $7.

Together, the changes explored in the study (other than eliminating free parking) could add up to as much as $818,000 a year in extra revenue, the study estimates. Harrell said the last round of fee increases helped modernize the city’s parking services and allowed the city to make progress on some deferred maintenance projects, and that the changes being explored in the study would do more of the same.

“It points us in the right direction of maintaining a healthy operation,” Harrell said.

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One thing that increased parking revenue would allow for is a residential parking enforcement program that would serve properties near downtown or surrounding the University of Kansas campus.

Harrell said a program to set aside parking in these residential areas for residents has been on the city’s radar “for a number of years,” but the creation of a parking permit program was greatly encouraged by residents and city commissioners in light of changes to the city’s land development code and projects surrounding KU’s football stadium.

The pilot program for this may not be so far away. Harrell said he hopes to implement it this fall, and if it is successful, the study said it could eventually include around 3,000 properties near downtown or surrounding KU.

Few details were shared in the presentation to the City Commission on Tuesday night about how the program would work. The presentation did assume that the program would require hiring a new parking control officer, getting a vehicle with a license-plate reader and installing more than 700 signs. It would also involve annual permit fees for neighborhood residents; each permit would cost $10 a year, and each property could have up to four permits associated with it.

Putting a residential parking permit program in place would have a start-up cost of around $200,000, which Harrell said the department can now cover because of its healthier parking fund.

A residential parking permit program could help with safety concerns from overparking, especially in areas near the KU campus, Harrell said. He noted that in these areas, where many cars are competing for few spaces along the street, people often park closer to stop signs or intersections than they do in other areas of town, which can block pedestrians or bikers from seeing traffic hazards. Extra enforcement can reduce those safety concerns, he said.

“A residential permit program allows us to extend our service to neighborhoods and reduce some of the safety concerns created by so many commuters parking,” Harrell said.

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Discussion of changes to rates and fees will all be part of the budget process for 2026, and the City Commission will have the final say. But, in the parking department’s presentation on Tuesday night, commissioners had some good things to say about the proposals.

Commissioner Brad Finkeldei said he “was a fan” of many of the suggestions presented by the department, particularly the outlines of the residential parking program. And Commissioner Bart Littlejohn was also optimistic about the changes, but said they would have to be done in a way that ensured there were enough free spaces for the workers at downtown businesses.

Harrell told the Journal-World that it was important to work closely with downtown stakeholders like Explore Lawrence and Downtown Lawrence Inc. to make sure they can “find common ground.”

As the potential changes to the parking process happen during 2026 budget discussions, Harrell said that he hopes that everyone can be involved in the process of improving the parking situation in Lawrence.

“That’s what helps us move forward in a positive (way) and the right speed for our community,” Harrell said.