The ridership numbers for GoLine’s new Beachside Circulator route, I’m told, are getting better every week.
Last week, the park-and-ride buses carried 50 passengers per day on weekdays – 25 each way – and 80 more on the weekend.
Those figures were up from 40 and 70 the week before.
Again, that’s what I was told.
That’s not what I saw.
I cruised through the free shuttle’s Riverside Park parking lot twice last week – both mid-afternoon, weekday visits – and didn’t see more than 10 vehicles on either occasion.
And, apparently, I’m not alone.
Two members of Vero’s Beachside Retailers Association said they’ve made multiple afternoon trips to the Riverside lot the past two weeks and saw as few as five and as many as only 12 parked cars on their drive-bys.
They also said they still see Central Beach hotel and restaurant workers parking their cars on Ocean Drive, moving them only when necessary to avoid being ticketed for violating the three-hour limit.
“Sometimes, they don’t even bother to move to another spot,” one beachside merchant said. “They just roll the car forward so the parking officer can’t see the chalk mark on the tire.”
More of a concern, VBRA members said, is that hotel and restaurant workers – particularly employees of the Vero Beach Hotel & Spa, Costa d’Este and Driftwood Resort – are becoming increasingly hostile when merchants ask them to not park in the spaces in front of their shops.
“We’re not looking for trouble; we’re looking to peacefully co-exist,” said Caesar Mistretta, co-owner of the Stringer Gallery and president of the 22-member VBRA.
“We need those parking spaces for our customers,” he added. “It’s a real problem, and it’s not fair to us.”
The Central Beach parking shortage, in fact, spawned the VBRA, whose members felt the Oceaside Business Association wasn’t doing enough to solve a problem that seems to get worse each winter.
In a meeting with Vero Beach City Manager Jim O’Connor last week, Mistretta pitched several suggestions, including:
- Posting “Customers Only Parking” signs in front of the beachside shops.
- Increasing police enforcement of parking time limits and raising the fines for violations from $20 to as much as $50.
- Reducing the current three-hour parking limit to two hours.
Nobody, especially the merchants, has shown any desire to implement parking meters or some other pay-to-park system along Ocean Drive, fearing the inconvenience more than the cost might drive away customers.
Most of the beachside business folks, though, are eager to find some way to accommodate shoppers, diners, bar patrons, beachgoers and, yes, hotel and restaurant workers, all of whom need to park somewhere.
“It’s a problem, and we’re trying to address it before the season starts again,” O’Connor said. “Our options are limited, because there are only so many parking spaces, and there’s only so much we can do from a legal standpoint. We really need everyone to work together.”
The Vero Beach Hotel & Spa, for one, is trying to do its part. In an attempt to mend its relationship with the VBRA and provide some relief to the merchants, the hotel’s parent company agreed to put up $40,000 – the local share of the $160,000 it costs to run the GoLine Beachside Circulator.
A Florida Department of Transportation grant covered the other $120,000.
“It’s a wonderful public-private partnership,” said Karen Deigl, president and CEO of Indian River Transit, which began operating GoLine’s Route 16 shuttle on July 1.
The 12-seat GoLine bus runs from 5:40 a.m. until 6 p.m. daily, making as many as a dozen stops every 20 minutes along a beachside loop that begins and ends at the Riverside Park parking lot located behind the tennis courts.
The Beachside Circulator is a well-intended, joint effort that undoubtedly will help reduce the parking problems along Ocean Drive.
But to what degree?
“It’s definitely going to help,” O’Connor said. “But at any given time during the day, there are 127 employees working at the big hotels and restaurants on the beach. So I’m not sure I’d say it solves the problem.”
It doesn’t.
And it won’t – unless the hotel and restaurant workers fully embrace the park-and-ride concept and begin taking the shuttle in far greater numbers than we’re seeing now.
“We’re only three weeks into this,” Deigl said. “As it progresses and people see how easy it is to get on and off, we think the ridership is going to continue to increase.
“Change can be difficult,” she added, “and it’s still very early.”
Deigl is so encouraged by the numbers reported thus far that she’s already pursuing grants to replace the small Go-Line bus with a trolley, which she said would carry more passengers and offer a better aesthetic fit with the small-town, seaside charm of Ocean Drive.
That’s not why the Beachside Circulator route was created, however.
Parking has been a problem in the Central Beach business area – particularly along Ocean Drive and especially during the winter and spring months – for more than a decade.
The addition of the Vero Beach Hotel & Spa in 2007 and Costa d’Este in 2008 only made a bad situation worse.
As is the case with most Central Beach hotels and restaurants, neither of the two new ones provided on-premises parking for employees. So, with no other option, the workers parked their vehicles on the street – taking up spaces in front of the merchants’ shops, too often during the prime business hours between noon and 5 p.m.
Some still do.
Duncan Clements, general manager at the Vero Beach Hotel & Spa, said he has encouraged his employees to use the shuttle, forgiving those who do for being “a few minutes late” for the first 30 days.
He said the hotel needs its on-premises parking for guests and would prefer his staff not use the public spaces needed by area merchants, going as far as to not allowing employees to leave their jobs to move their cars.
“We can’t stop them from parking on a public street; it’s their right as taxpayers,” Clements said. “But there’s a three-hour time limit on those spaces, so they’re taking a chance that they’re going to get ticketed.”
He said many of the hotel’s employees already are using the shuttle, and he expects that number to increase when the tourist season arrives and parking on the streets becomes even more difficult.
“A few don’t want to use the bus, but I think that will change,” Clements said. “That’s why we want our team to get into the habit of using it now.”
One of the more visible vehicles of those continuing to play musical cars on the street near the Vero Beach Hotel belongs to one of Clements’ employees, Monica, who declined to give her last name.
Driver of a bright yellow Nissan, she comes out and moves it from one spot to another in an effort to beat parking enforcement of the three hour limit.
“A friend watches my son while I’m at work, and I need to pick him up as soon as possible,” said the young woman.
She said co-workers who have used the park-and-ride system told her they sometimes wait 15 or 20 minutes in front of the hotel for the shuttle, which then takes up to 10 minutes to get back to Riverside Park.
“I can’t wait 20 minutes when my son is waiting for me,” she said. “I don’t have another option right now. I’ll try to use it when he goes back to school.”
In the meantime, Vero Beach Police Chief David Currey said his department has stepped up its enforcement of the parking time limits, paying its parking specialist overtime to work all but four Saturdays from Dec. 27 through May 30.
The specialist wrote 275 parking citations on those Saturdays alone, prompting Currey to request the funding to add a second, part-time specialist in October.
So we don’t know how many beachside workers are riding the bus. We don’t know how many will ride the bus this winter, when the Ocean Drive parking problems are at their worst. We don’t know if this $160,000 is being wasted.
“We’ve put the word out and we’ve made it as convenient and safe as we can,” Deigl said, “but we can’t force people to take the shuttle.”
No, they can’t.
But the Central Beach hotel and restaurant managers can strongly urge – if not require – their employees to park and ride.
They can give their workers credit for their time on the shuttle. They can be good neighbors to the merchants who need those precious spaces in front of their shops.
The Central Beach hotel and restaurant managers can do what’s best for everyone.
“During the season, it will be easier to take the bus than to try to park here,” Clements said. “As convenient as it is, as often as it runs during the business day, I think the bus will become very popular.”
And it should.
Maybe this is too much to expect in today’s what’s-best-for-me culture, but in a special place like Vero Beach, I’d like to think these employees are as community-minded as the rest of us – that they understand what those parking spaces mean to the merchants and want to be part of the solution, not the problem.
Unfortunately, that’s not what I saw.
