Downtown Parking Crisis Is Not A Bug. It's A Civic Feature, Argues Retired DPW Supervisor

WAUKESHA — I have spent 31 years of my professional life keeping this city's infrastructure functional, and I want to say clearly, before anyone accuses me of going soft in retirement, that I am not calling for the parking situation near City Hall to be fixed. I am calling for it to be left exactly as broken as it currently is.

With advance voting for the Aug. 11 partisan primary running through Friday at City Hall, 201 Delafield Street, the lot has been operating at what I'd estimate is 140 percent of its intended draw, and on-street spots within two blocks disappear by 9:15 most mornings. I clocked my own search Tuesday at 18 minutes, door to door, which included one full loop of the building and a stretch on St. Paul Avenue I am fairly sure I wasn't supposed to be on. I want to be clear that I enjoyed all 18 minutes.

This is not a contrarian position for its own sake. I have reviewed the City Clerk's turnout figures, which show early voting running about 15 percent ahead of the 2022 cycle at this same point in the calendar, and I have a theory about why, and the theory is parking. Specifically, the absence of it.

The Walking Part

When it takes 18 minutes to find a spot, a person ends up parking somewhere they wouldn't have chosen on purpose, and walking a distance they wouldn't have chosen on purpose, past storefronts they would otherwise have driven past at 25 miles an hour without registering. Tuesday alone, in the course of finding a spot and then finding City Hall from that spot, I passed Scraps and Sparks, waved at a woman I hadn't seen since her retirement party in 2019, and stood behind a man in line at a coffee cart who turned out to know my daughter-in-law's cousin. None of that happens in a parking structure. A parking structure is a machine for arriving without encountering anyone.

"Inconvenience breeds community. I did not say the words would sound good. I said they were true."

— Bob Krueger, retired Waukesha DPW supervisor

I raised this with my wife, who pointed out that I am describing 18 minutes of walking as a form of civic engagement rather than what it actually is, which is being unable to find a parking spot. I told her that's exactly the kind of narrow thinking that got us four-lane roads with nobody on the sidewalks. She said I sound like a man justifying a parking ticket. I do not have a parking ticket. I want that on the record.

What The City Isn't Saying

I put the theory to Councilman Gary Puchalski, who has heard from me on other infrastructure matters and took the call anyway. Puchalski declined to endorse the position, and also declined to reject it, which I consider the correct response from an elected official to a compelling idea he isn't yet ready to be quoted agreeing with. "I wouldn't say the parking is a feature," Puchalski said. "I also wouldn't say it isn't. I'd say it's the parking we currently have, and the election is going fine." I've had worse endorsements.

I'll acknowledge the counterargument, because I was a public servant for 31 years and I know how to acknowledge a counterargument even when I disagree with it completely. The counterargument is that some residents, particularly older ones and those with mobility limitations, genuinely cannot walk the distance from the nearest available spot to the City Hall entrance, and that this is a real barrier to voting rather than a charming one. I am 72. I walked it Tuesday in 18 minutes including the wrong turn. I recognize I am not everyone's case study, and I'd rather the city fix the accessible spots specifically than the whole lot generally, which I understand is a more complicated position than the one I opened with.

The Boutique Theory

Downtown has, by my count, at least three storefronts currently displaying "closing sale" signs that have been up long enough to have their own weathering pattern. I don't think that's unrelated to this discussion. A person who has to walk past a struggling boutique twice a week because they can't park directly in front of City Hall is a person who might eventually walk in. A person who parks in a ramp and takes an elevator directly to the clerk's window is a person who has never once been tempted by a candle.

I don't have data on candle purchases. I have 31 years of watching this city move, on foot and by car, and I know what I've seen, which is that the year the parking is easiest is the year nobody remembers running into anybody.

Early voting continues through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with an extended session until 7 p.m. on the final Tuesday. Get there early. Not because the lines are long. Because the lot is smaller than you think, and that, I'd argue, is the whole point.