Parking Data Insights From Henry Law Park

We requested parking data for Henry Law Park in Dover and wanted to share our review of it

As our group prepares to speak with the City of Dover about some of the designs we showed off in our last newsletter article, we anticipated an uphill battle for one of our ideas, namely the removal of some parking. I’ve outlined in the past that parking should be considered a cost of doing business since it is an expensive, unproductive land use pattern, and I also stated that providing viable alternatives to driving reduces the demand for parking. That same thinking applies here, but we wanted to make data-backed arguments to support our proposed designs and in our preparations we requested 3 years of parking data from Dover for this location.

We’ve gone over the data, discussing it in detail, and in doing so have been able to conclude some interesting insights. Before we get into that, here are the details for the next in-person meeting.

February Meeting Details

Monday, February 10th 6:30PM - 8:00PM
Juniper Kitchen in Dover

Our conversation for this meeting will focus on how parking affects walkability in our cities. At our last meeting we saw some instances where the city of Dover was prioritizing parking over sidewalks and bike lanes and we wanted to expand that topic to include other ways that parking affects how walkable our places are. We hope to see you there!

Overview of Parking Data

We reached out to Dover’s Parking Manager, Bill Simons who was able to supply us with some information regarding the angled parking along Henry Law Avenue near the park. The metered parking in this area includes 60 spaces and during the year of 2024 it saw 14,645 users purchase a total of 28,694 hours. Ok, so what does that actually tell us? A lot, but not enough really. Let me explain further.

The parking spaces in green is what we have been given data for and it excludes the metered parking spaces in red.

Finding Out Utilization

We can find out the average utilization percentage if we take the total number of available hours that can be sold and plug in the actual number of hours sold. While the average is somewhat useful, it does not tell us what peak utilization looks like and we would need more detailed data to determine that. Looking at Dover’s parking holidays and their Monday - Saturday 9AM - 8PM charging periods we end up with 198,660 hours.

Hours per day = 11 (9AM - 8PM)
Days per week = 6 (Monday - Saturday)
Weeks per year = 52
Number of spots = 60
Number of holidays = 11

(Weeks per year * Days per week) - Number of holidays = 301 Parking days

Parking days * Hours per day = 3,311 hours per spot

Hours per spot * Number of spots = 198,660 Total hours available

Now that we know how many hours of parking we could potential sell, we can determine based on the number of hours actually sold, how much the parking spots are utilized on average.

Total hours available = 198,660
Total hours sold = 28,694

Total hours sold / Total hours available = 0.144 or 14.4% Utilization

Well there you have it, the lot has a 14.4% average utilization rate, which means that it is 85% empty on average. Unfortunately it is not that straightforward because this is only considering people who pay the meter, and parking is used by a lot more people than that. Some veterans and handicap are allowed 3 hour parking which won’t show up on the meter, and people who park for less than 15 minutes wouldn’t either. However, the biggest impact on these numbers would be parking permit holders.

In his email to us Simons said that this lot has 32 parking permit holders, 14 for businesses and 18 for residential. He was also kind enough to suggest the impact that they might have on parking utilization rates. If the business permit holders work 5 days a week, and have around 10 vacation days a year, we can look at about 8.5 hours a day for them. The residential users will likely use the parking on all available days. Let’s add Simon’s suggestions to our utilization rates.

All of these categories are estimated hours
Business = 29,750 hours
Residential = 46,000 hours
15 minute = 2,869 hours
3 hour = 2,869 hours
Illegal = 2,869 hours

Business + Residential + 15 minute + 3 hour + Illegal = 84,357 Unmetered hours

Unmetered hours + Total hours sold = 113,051 Hours utilized

Hours utilized / Total hours available = 0.569 or 56.9% Utilization

That is what the data shows, with several educated guesses thrown in. There is a lot of stuff missing from just this data, though. For instance, we can’t see weekday or seasonal changes, nor can we see what peak utilization is like. Knowing trends throughout the week and seasons as well as how often we are at a high (85% or higher) utilization rate could be useful information.

Our Take On It

As stated, our hope is to understand the parking data for this street in more detail because some of our proposed designs impact that parking and we want to make informed choices. One of the first things we noticed was just how low the 14.4% purchased utilization rate was for this street. The bulk of utilization comes from the business and residential permits (42.5% of available metered hours).

Parking Permits Are a Huge Discount

According to the city’s website, the parking permits for Henry Law Avenue are $35 per month and are sold out. Parking permits in the city are very popular with many locations sold out, and there is even a waitlist to get in line to purchase one. If you look at the numbers, it is no secret why the permits are such a hot commodity, they give an incredible discount on parking prices for these locations.

Looking just at Henry Law Avenue, the price for 8.5 hours of parking (the amount that Simons recommended we account for in our utilization formula) would fall under progressive pricing and totals out to $21.63 every day. This means that the permits pay for themselves on the second day and adds up to roughly a 92.2% discount for businesses and a 93.5% discount for residential.

Business Permit Discount

Price per day = $21.63
(52 weeks * 5 days) - 11 holidays - 10 vacation days = 239 Parking days
Parking days * Price per day = $5,169.57

Permit price = $35
Permit price * 12 months = $420

$5,169.57 - $420 = $4749.57 In savings or a 91.9% discount

Residential Permit Discount

Price per day = $21.63
(52 weeks * 6 days) - 11 holidays = 301 Parking days
Parking days * Price per day = $6,510.63

Permit price = $35
Permit price * 12 months = $420

$5,169.57 - $420 = $6090.63 In savings or a 93.6% discount

Those are pretty crazy discounts which also apply to pretty much all parking permits sold in the city, but let’s stay focused on Henry Law Avenue. The prices for these permits is not keeping up with inflation and they have actually gotten cheaper over the years. Do we want to be selling our parking for this low of a price? Is that good for the city in terms of being able to afford maintenance on our parking infrastructure and streets? Do these prices reflect the true costs of providing parking to these users? I’m not sure, but it seems like they are underpriced, especially if they are selling out and we need to join a waitlist just to buy one.

Total Utilization is Difficult to Quantify

When you look at the 56.9% utilization rate, you could interpret that as the the parking section being 43.1% empty all of the time, but that really isn’t how this breaks down. In reality, the parking is probably well above those numbers at peak hours, perhaps even close to 70% or 80%, but then drops when the businesses are closed to a much lower number.

The picture becomes hard to paint with the available data because we have to guess about the utilization rates for permitted parking and other forms of non-metered usage. We are trying to be as honest as we can by adopting the suggestions from Simons, and one of our leaders even went out to do in-person observations a few times. Altogether it does give a bit of a blurry picture, and we want to give a stronger analysis. Our goal is to be able to determine seasonal patterns and peak times to make more informed recommendations, but data from the meters doesn’t quite cover this.

Conclusion

We started with a review of parking at a single location in the city in the hopes of making constructive suggestions with our advocacy, but we ended up discovering that the city is deeply discounting parking with the use of permits. I understand the value proposition of selling parking at a sort of bulk discount, but these numbers seem extremely low to the point where the city might be losing money on them.

We would also love for there to be more detailed parking data to review, as it stands we only had hours and permits sold and the rest is just best guesses. If the city could come up with some methods of getting detailed parking utilization data, then it could better determine if its parking goals are being met. Thank you for reading, and we will continue looking into the parking data here, and maintaining the conversation with the city.