Officials with Alaska’s Department of Transportation are looking into cracking down on parking at Kodiak’s state airport. Specifically, the department is looking at instituting tickets or fees so more people are able to use the limited amount of spaces.
The issue of overfilled airport parking lots was discussed at a recent Kodiak Borough Assembly meeting on Nov. 14. Both the long term and short term parking lots at the local airport are almost always full, especially during the holidays, with some vehicles parked in the same spot for days or even weeks at a time.
Christopher Goins, the department’s director of the Southcoast region, which includes Kodiak, said some are leaving their vehicles parked for, “unreasonable amounts of time.”
“And it’s making it difficult for folks that are transitioning to the airport for shorter spans to be able to park there, leave the town, and basically come back," Goins explained. "So essentially parking is filling up and people are having to get rides to the airport instead of being able to stay there.”
According to Goins, the airport parking lot in Sitka was experiencing similar challenges in recent years, so the department instituted a booting system which required drivers to pay a fee before they could use their vehicle again. He said this method had a lot of success in the rural Southeast community.
“What that has done is really shifted the mindset of folks down there [in Sitka] and also allowed for parking options to open up for others to come and go," he said. "And it was really remarkable the difference that we’ve seen just in the last year or so, from starting to implement these types of methods. And so they are hoping to do something very similar to that; maybe not the exact same thing.”
The department and the Statewide Aviation Office are working together to issue a proposal to hire a contractor to manage the parking lot in Kodiak. According to an email Kodiak Island Borough staff received from Goins, Clark Cox with the Statewide Aviation Office in Anchorage is currently modifying the RFP based on, “some lessons learned from the challenges in Sitka.”
Goins said the final system for Kodiak's airport parking has not been decided yet, but it will likely involve some form of fees and potentially a towing service to remove vehicles that remain parked at the airport for too long. The Department of Transportation will likely collect those fees, in which case, Goins said the money will have to be invested back into the airport.
He said the intent is not for the fees to be an income source for the department but instead change behavior and open up parking for local residents.
Goins expects a request for proposals [RFP] will go out for bid by the end of this year. An exact timeline for implementing the enforcement methods is unknown.
