One option is to do away with private garages for high density housing. Build parking structures or underground common garages with assigned spaces, much like the Terraces at Dublin Village. There the have to use there space as the common garage is no place to stack junk.

Best solution is put a halt to any additional high density residential development that is away from the two BART stations. It has no business being in Silveira Ranch, Wallis Ranch. Those are the last places where we can put single family homes with sizable yard which we lack in Dublin.

The City of Dublin may not be able to do much for residents in the Dublin Ranch Villages, but they still wield tremendously influence over projects currently in development. In addition to strict enforcement, parking garages in higher density areas must be designed with accessibility and convenience in mind, so home owners will want to use them.

Good parking design is a complex challenge that requires a multi-faceted approach. Dublin can no longer afford to continue its simplistic modeling of human behavior as it reviews garage plans from future higher density developments. Those of us who live in Dublin Ranch Villages bear the ultimate responsibility for the parking crisis in our neighborhood, but the developers, the Planning Commission, and City Planning should also be held accountable.

Near San Francisco State University and other areas in the city where parking is very limited, the city offers residential parking permits to residents in those areas. There is a serial number on the permit that can be traced back to who it was issued to as a way of verifying that that vehicle and permit match up.

You have to pay an annual fee and prove that you reside in that unit. The permit must be visibly displayed somewhere on or in the vehicle. There is also a limit on how many permits can be issued per household.

If the city of Dublin implements something similar, this will encourage residents to use their garages and cut down on the number of cars per household. Also, people that do not live in the area will be discouraged from parking there, which will free up more spaces for residents.

In San Francisco, the Department of Parking and Traffic handles the enforcement. If the car does not have the permit visibly displayed, you get a ticket. The only thing is that this is only enforced between certain hours, which won’t solve the problem in Dublin, but the city of Dublin can make it a 24-hour enforcement.

I know that presently, Dublin doesn’t have the manpower to enforce those types of violations 24/7, but if people know that they have to prove that they live in the area and are limited to a certain number of permits per household, then this may help alleviate the problem.

The city may have planned sufficient parking spaces in terms of absolute square footage, but if those spaces are not easily accessible, they should not be weighed the same as the more accessible parking spaces. I really hope the City of Dublin will apply the hard lessons learned from the Dublin Ranch Villages as we go forward with the other planned higher density developments. Our first step should be to stop the developers from building more residential units beyond what was initially agreed to. We should also deny zoning change applications like the one currently being considered for Grafton Plaza, which will only exacerbate the parking crisis at the Villages. Charter may promise to build a multi-level subterranean parking garage, but do you really think people will park on B5, when ground-level parking is available?