Patti Culliton, city employee, told The Post-Journal this week that all two-hour parking meters downtown will be changed to three hours. Also, two-hour parking meters on the outskirts of the downtown will be changed to 12 hours along with almost all of the surface lot meters except the upper deck of the Main Street parking lot. She said all of the 12-hour meters on the outskirts of the downtown will not change. She added all parking meters will be reprogrammed as well.

Culliton said the city has a grand total of 1,024 parking meters, with 601 two-hour parking meters being changed to three hours. She hopes to have the conversion done by Tuesday, but said, at times, it is challenging to do in the winter elements. She added that around 47 percent of the meters have been converted as of Wednesday afternoon.

“It is a lot of cold metal to metal,” she said. “It is sometimes hard to line it up (the tool changing the times) when you’re shaking from the cold.”

Jeff Lehman, city public works director, said the changes go along with the recommendations from the ad hoc Parking Advisory Committee. In November 2017, the committee presented its recommendations to the Jamestown City Council for improving parking in the central business district of the city. Members of the committee, which first met in July 2016, included downtown business owners, city administrators and officials from the Jamestown Renaissance Corporation and Reg Lenna Center for the Arts.

One of the parking meters in front of Shawbucks near the National Comedy Center that have been changed in downtown Jamestown is pictured. City officials are making changes to downtown parking hours to correlate with the recommendations from the city’s ad hoc Parking Advisory Committee.

Solutions presented included converting all two-hour meters to three-hour meters; changing non-lease surface lot meters to 12 hours; convert the outskirts of the central business district, Fifth and Sixth streets, to 12-hour meters; and keeping all current exceptions, which includes 30-minute meters, loading/unloading zones and handicapped spaces.

One of the recommendations from the committee was to eliminate all of the free courtesy zones. However, the free courtesy zones will not be changed and will remain at two hours.

“The idea is to have all-day parkers on the outskirts walk into the downtown. It will be an incentive to have people walking into the downtown and it will free up more parking downtown,” Lehman said.

City officials are still working on possibly acquiring “smart” meters that would accept credit cards and the PayByPhone app, along still with coins, to pay at a meter.

“That is still in the design,” Lehman said about smart meters being purchased and installed in downtown Jamestown.

In 2017, city officials received a Transportation Alternatives Program/Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grant to fund “Smart Tourism” initiative that will assist city officials in developing signage to help people navigate downtown easier so they travel less by vehicle. The city received a $400,000 federal grant, which was allocated by the state, with a local match of $100,000 being provided by the Gebbie Foundation for the wayfinding improvements.

In 2017, the Jamestown City Council approved hiring Bergmann Associates of Rochester for $72,000 for consulting services for the design of a project titled “Smart Tourism Transportation in Jamestown.” One of the focuses for Bergmann Associates will be to implement smart technology for the parking meters and ramps so they can easily accept credit cards or the PayByPhone app. With money from the $500,000 grant, city officials could purchase and install smart meters.