BOZEMAN, Mont.- Shoppers could see more parking spaces in downtown Bozeman as the city looks to an engineering company to weigh its options.
A sea of cars fills the Bridger Park Downtown Garage as the lunch hour rolls in. The parking garage is one of the places left to park for Dave Kascht, who understands parking on the streets is no longer an option.
“You end up just driving around, I mean I come to the parking garage quite a lot just because usually there is space here but you try and find on-street parking it is virtually impossible,” said Kascht.
The lack of parking combined with the fact that 2-3 people move to Bozeman each day creates a real problem – One the city’s parking department is trying to solve.
“We are definitely seeing an increase (of) capacity issues,” said Parking Program Manager Ed Meece. “We haven’t had that many [days] where it was completely full but especially during the day, say between noon and 2 we see a pretty heavy load.”
This load prompted the city to hire engineering company Sanderson Stewart to weigh the need for more spaces.
“What we need to do is make sure we are balancing available parking as well of the cost of that infrastructure to get to get in place,” said Meece.
If the survey determines the need for more spaces, two levels will be constructed on top of the current parking garage with the addition of 200 spaces.
“I think we have a choice of either get more parking or fewer people and unfortunately the fewer people isn’t an option,” said Kascht.
The study is expected to take two to three months and will cost $43,000.
