PA: Revitalizing Harrisburg: How parking, transit can be improved

Parking is a hot button topic in Harrisburg.

On Wednesday, PennLive continued the conversation about how to revitalize Harrisburg during a roundtable focused on parking and transportation in the city.

Four stakeholders shared their visions for improving public transit and parking during the online meeting, which was livestreamed on PennLive’s YouTube channel.

The Foundation for Enhancing Communities sponsored the roundtable and upcoming ones as part of a community discussion series.

Wednesday’s discussion yielded several key takeaways about Harrisburg’s parking and transportation:

Make transportation equity-friendly

Dr. Laura Beltrán, research director with Penn Policy Center, emphasized the need to expand transportation so it’s available to a majority of residents.

“Transportation is an equalizer for our community,” she said. “It allows individuals from all walks of life to have access to job opportunities, to be able to go to a job interview, health appointments and education opportunities.”

Consistent funding for transportation in Harrisburg should be a priority, she said.

“When we look at solutions and when we think about transit, it has to be from an equity standpoint,” she said. “It has to be what are the solutions that would benefit the majority of individuals regardless of their socioeconomic status.”

Beltrán said she would like to see transportation provided to such individuals in the community as medical staff and teachers.

There needs to be more to do

People need a reason to come downtown.

“Nobody comes downtown to give their car a workout. You drive downtown because you want to do something,” said Kevin Burrell, a Harrisburg resident and Strategic Initiative Policy Manager at the Pennsylvania Association of Nonprofit Organizations.

Burrell said he can walk to places in the downtown but realizes that’s not feasible for everyone, including senior citizens.

Todd Vander Woude, executive director of the Downtown Improvement District, echoed Burrell’s sentiments, emphasizing people paying to park need more to do downtown.

People come to events such as parades and festivals and always find a place to park, he said.

“We need to potentially get more events out there. You look at Kipona, you look at our restaurant week, people come downtown for those events. Maybe we need more events,” Vander Woude said.

Streamline bus routes

Richard Farr, Executive Director of Rabbit Transit and Capital Area Transit, said his company is working to streamline bus routes to make some routes more efficient.

A working mother doesn’t want to spend four hours a day riding a bus to and from work and then dropping and picking her children up at day care, he said.

Rabbit Transit is in the final stages of a high intensity mobility corridor study.

“We want to create the routes that are the most connected to communities, connecting them to job opportunities and to healthcare to really look at what does it take to make it a high intensity,” Farr said.

Those routes would have more frequency with less and better developed stops with shelters and lighting.

“We need to look at how do we speed up the bus,” he said, adding that maybe they could work with local communities to shorten traffic signals for buses to keep them moving.

He said Rabbit Transit will announce more information next year.

“If you have a bus route that is coming every 15 minutes, then you know you can count on it reliably to schedule the rest of your day,” Beltrán said.

Change is expensive

At a previous PennLive forum, someone proposed a downtown trolley linking midtown with the core business district. But stakeholders noted that costs money.

Beltrán said Pennsylvania spends the least amount on transportation compared to neighboring states such as New York and New Jersey.

State funding, she said is key for funding big transportation projects.

“It would require a strong partnership and lawmakers willing to make such an investment,” Beltrán said.

Additionally, she said transit should be viewed as an investment, not an expenditure.

A cost-benefit analysis could show how long it would take to recoup an investment, whether taxes generated through businesses or higher property values, she said.

The more people who commute to Harrisburg, whether for a night out or to a restaurant, helps.

“There are definitely opportunities for bigger investment as long as we collaborate with the state,” she said.

Wednesday’s roundtable grew out of a forum on revitalizing Harrisburg’s downtown that PennLive hosted in August.

It included two active participants in Lancaster’s downtown revitalization: Tripp Muldrow, an economic development consultant and principal with Arnett Muldrow & Associates of Greenville, S.C.; and Marshall W. Snively, president of theLancaster City Alliance, a nonprofit organization that supported its economic turnaround.

Earlier this year, PennLive published a seven-part “Dueling Downtowns“ series comparing Harrisburg’s decline with the continued successes achieved by downtown Lancaster, just 50 miles away.

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