This should surprise no one: The ridership numbers for GoLine’s Beachside Circulator shuttle haven’t changed since the route was created last summer to ease the parking problem in the Central Beach business area.
They’re still extremely disappointing. The numbers don’t lie. The sad truth: Almost nobody is taking the shuttle.
According to Karen Deigl, president and CEO of Indian River Transit, which began operating GoLine’s Route 16 shuttle on July 1, ridership is averaging about 20 passengers per day during the week. Four months ago, that number was 25.
“It’s pretty much the same,” Deigl said, “but we’re hoping to see a jump in December, when our busy season really gets going, then continue through April.”
Hoping?
The same way beachside merchants, especially those along Ocean Drive, are hoping that having the city paint the words “CUSTOMER PARKING” on spaces in front of their shops will dissuade employees of the nearby hotels and restaurants, as well as all-day beachgoers, from parking in them for hours at a time?
“It’s worth a try,” Vero Beach City Manager Jim O’Connor said. “We have no way to enforce it, because we can’t prevent people from parking in a public space, but we’re hoping that people take this as a friendly reminder that these spaces are for customers.”
O’Connor said the Oceanside Business Association paid $100 per parking space to have 20 of them painted and designated for customers shopping along Ocean Drive, Cardinal Drive and adjacent side streets.
The spaces were marked only last week, so it’s too soon to say whether hotel employees, restaurant workers and beachgoers are complying – or will comply – with the request. But the GoLine shuttle’s dismal ridership numbers make it difficult to be optimistic.
The 16-seat bus runs from 5:40 a.m. until 6 p.m., making as many as a dozen stops along a beachside loop that begins and ends at Riverside Park. The shuttle circles every 20 minutes. Police regularly patrol the park’s parking lot, which is located behind the tennis courts.
And still the buses are too often empty.
“Frankly,” O’Connor said, “we were hoping the numbers would be better by this time.”
They’re not. They’re actually a tad worse. And it’s silly to think that painting “CUSTOMER PARKING” on a parking space will suddenly awaken the hotel and restaurant workers to the problem and prompt them to take the shuttle.
Truth is, the hotel and restaurant employees already know the merchants need those spaces for customers – and they don’t care.
They don’t care that the Central Beach has a serious parking shortage, especially during the busy winter months. They don’t care that, by parking in the precious few spaces along Ocean Drive, they’re costing merchants hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. They don’t care about being good neighbors.
All they care about is what’s easiest for them.
They don’t want to leave their homes 20 minutes earlier to take the shuttle to work. They don’t want to wait 15 minutes for the shuttle to pick them up at the end of the day. They don’t want to waste 10 minutes riding the shuttle back to their cars.
That’s way too inconvenient.
Besides, they’ve learned how to scam the system.
Don’t think so? Just ask the merchants, who watch the employees use their breaks to move their cars from one space to another to avoid getting ticketed for violating the three-hour time limit.
Some employees have mastered their abuse to the point where they initially park a few feet from the curb, then, as the time limit approaches, simply move their cars forward so the parking officer can’t see the chalk mark he left on the tires earlier.
Others grab their co-workers’ keys and move multiple cars to different spots.
“It’s a problem,” said Nancy Cook, longtime owner of Twig Swim & Sportswear shop on Ocean Drive. “I don’t go out and check cars every day, but I listen to my customers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard: ‘I’d have come in but I couldn’t find a place to park.’
“It’s definitely costing us money – in some cases, a lot of money,” she added. “We can’t survive without customer parking.”
The hotel and restaurant workers don’t seem to care much about that, either.
But their employers should.
“They need to impress upon their employees the severity of the problem and the need to take the shuttle,” said Caesar Mistretta, co-owner of the Stringer Gallery and president of Vero’s Beachside Retailers Association. “I don’t think that’s happening in most places.”
Managers at The Driftwood Resort and Waldo’s restaurant say it’s happening there. At the Costa d’Este Beach Resort & Spa, however, employees who can’t find on-premises parking – as often happens during the winter months – take to the streets.
“It depends on how busy we,” said Maggie O’Brien, the hotel’s marketing director. “During the busy season, it becomes a little tricky.”
The Vero Beach Hotel & Spa’s parent company, in an attempt to mend its relationship with retailers and provide some relief to the merchants, put up $40,000 – the local share of the $160,000 it costs to operate GoLine’s Beachside Circulator. (A Florida Department of Transportation grant covered the rest.)
And when contacted last summer, the hotel’s general manager, Duncan Clements, said he was encouraging his employees to use the shuttle, initially forgiving those who, as a result of doing so, were a few minutes late for work.
“We can’t stop them from parking on a public street,” Clements said then. “It’s their right as taxpayers.”
He’s correct: His employees can park, legally, in any of the public spaces along Ocean Drive.
But what if the Central Beach hotels and restaurants made riding the shuttle a condition of employment?
Clements didn’t respond to a request to be interviewed for this column, but O’Connor said that, as he understands the law, the employers cannot require employees to take the shuttle unless the workers were paid for their travel time.
“In theory, the hotel could say, ‘You have to take the shuttle, but we’ll pay you for your time,’” O’Connor said. “I haven’t heard of that happening.”
It’s doubtful he will.
“But even if they can’t force them to take the shuttle, they could make it very inconvenient for those who don’t,” O’Connor added. “From what I’ve heard, it’s pretty much a condition of employment at The Driftwood.”
The other hotels and restaurants could do the same – especially when hiring new employees who could be told in advance, “If you want the job, you must take the bus.” Eventually, shuttle ridership would increase through the staff turnover that usually occurs at such businesses.
Maybe these hotels and restaurants can’t legally give their current employees ride-or-quit ultimatums, but the managers could look with disfavor upon those workers who still selfishly refuse to do what’s best for the community and continue to park on the streets.
People do want to keep their jobs, right?
The managers also could offer their employees incentives that would encourage shuttle use but be less costly than making their time on the bus part of their work day.
“The shuttle can be effective in reducing the parking problem,” Cook said, “but that will happen only if the employers insist their employees use it.”
It hasn’t happened yet, and we’re into November.
So Cook already is considering other solutions – including a user-fee parking system utilizing kiosks, then using that revenue to increase police enforcement of the three-hour limit.
“You can’t strictly enforce the three-hour limit,” she said, “if you’re over here only twice a day.”
Cook said merchants are divided on the pay-to-park concept, with opponents saying it would “ruin the character” of Vero Beach.
“But if we don’t have these shops, we’ll lose the character of the community, anyway,” Cook said. “The health of the retail area here is part of the charm and culture of our community. The shops in this area are part of what makes Vero Beach so unique, so special.
“That’s why we need to solve this parking problem,” she added. “If not, the beach will still be here but these shops won’t. And if these shops and boutiques go, what do you think will move in?”
Think Daytona Beach.
Another possibility being discussed by the VBRA is reducing the time limit on the Central Beach business district’s parking spaces from three hours to two – a move the restaurants almost certainly would oppose.
“There ARE alternatives, and I’m just trying to have the foresight we didn’t have before,” Cook said, alluding to the city’s failure to address the parking issue before the Vero Beach Hotel (2007) and Costa d’Este (2008) opened for business.
“No one on the east side of Ocean Drive, except for the Ocean Grill, has adequate parking, so it pours over to the other side,” she continued. “You know what that does to the merchants on the west side of the street?
“This shouldn’t be a contest; we’re not at war,” she added. “We all need each other – the hotels, the restaurants, the shops.
“The hotels benefit from having us here, and we benefit from having them here. Their vitality is dependent on our vitality, and our vitality is dependent on their vitality.
“We need to respect each other and work together.”
O’Connor wants to give the shuttle and “CUSTOMER PARKING” spaces a chance, so it’s unlikely we’ll see any further steps taken to alleviate the parking shortage until the spring.
By then, he should have the results of a merchants’ survey that will be conducted by the VBRA in the coming weeks.
“If this doesn’t work, we’ll try something else,” O’Connor said. “There’s no easy solution.
“The fact is, we have a higher demand for parking on the beach than we can supply, and there’s neither the land nor the money to build a parking facility. So we’re going to have a problem.
“Even if all the hotel and restaurant employees took the shuttle, we’d still have a problem,” he added. “And with more people coming here each year – and with more people staying here longer – the problem isn’t going away. We’ll just have to continue working with the merchants and see what we can do.
“We’re open to suggestions. I’m not taking anything off the table.”
In the meantime, Cook said she’s hoping the hotel employees, restaurant workers and all-day beachgoers will consider the neighboring shop owners, “have a conscience,” and avoid the parking spaces marked for customers.
Hoping?
At the moment, there’s not much more she can do.