Denver will limit parking on neighborhood streets around the Louisiana-Pearl and Yale light-rail stations to two hours when southeast train service starts Nov. 17.
City officials are worried that rail commuters will fill neighborhood parking spots all day, inconveniencing area residents, said Bob Kochevar, a Denver Public Works Department official.
The Regional Transportation District is completing construction of the 19-mile, $880 million southeast rail line along Interstates 25 and 225 as part of T-REX.
Denver also is looking to restrict street parking near the Dayton station on the I-225 leg of the southeast line.
Residents near the stations will get neighborhood stickers that exempt them from the two-hour parking restrictions in their area, Kochevar said.
RTD officials have a different parking concern at the University of Denver station on the southeast line.
The station has a 540-space parking garage, and RTD fears that non-transit users – specifically some studying or working at the university – will occupy many of the spaces in the garage even though they are not using the train.
To prevent that, RTD is considering a plan that would require garage users to pull a ticket when entering and then have that ticket validated at machines located at their destination train station.
Only a validated ticket would allow someone to exit the garage.
The agency also is exploring the possibility of towing vehicles that are left for more than 24 hours in the university garage.
Over the past year, RTD looked into a plan that would allow it to charge for parking at select park-n-Rides, including the university station.
The plan aimed to offer residents of the district free parking for the first 24 hours but charge out-of-district residents for first-day parking.
All parking patrons would pay if they left a vehicle for more than a day.
But Colorado legislators stepped in earlier this year and passed a measure that made the pay-for-parking arrangement untenable, RTD general manager Cal Marsella told agency board members Monday.
The legislation made it difficult for RTD to get vehicle-registration information from the state that would distinguish where vehicle owners live.
The transit agency will ask the 2007 legislative session to make changes in the law.
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.
