BECKLEY, W.Va. — The City of Beckley is experimenting with free lunchtime parking at select places.
Beckley Mayor Rob Rappold said on WJLS’s Radio Roundtable Monday the city is thankful for the new businesses setting up shop downtown in recent months.
“We appreciate so much the new restaurants that have started doing business in Beckley. It’s tough, if you go in for lunch and you have to worry about running back out halfway through your lunch to put another quarter in the meter…it doesn’t help that lunch experience I don’t think.”
The Beckley Common Council has received public inquiries at meetings about implementing free parking throughout the city. Mayor Rappold explained the process to adopt such a program is not as easy as pulling meters out of the ground.
“We’re limited due to bond covenants and money that had been borrowed against parking facilities to the amount of free parking…the number of meters we can actually take out of service. That’s the tough side of it.”
The plan, which has already been implemented, would suspend ticketing between 11:30 am and 1:30 pm weekdays. This only applies to parking along Neville Street, Main Street, East Main Street and the Word Park lot.
All other meters would follow the traditional 8 am until 4 pm enforcement format. The new free parking program also does not apply to uptown side streets like Howe Street, McCreery Street and Woodlawn Avenue.
“That’s a couple of hours there which will give restaurant, and other retail business patrons, hopefully ample time to do what they need to do without having to worry about a parking ticket,” Mayor Rappold said.
The experimental program will run for roughly 120 days. The Beckley Common Council will then decide what to do with it from there.