Take your time: Bedford Village extends downtown parking to two hours

Shoppers and others can now keep a less anxious eye on the clock after parking in Bedford Village’s busy downtown.

That’s because curbside parking spaces that were limited to stays of an hour from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. have seen their permitted occupancy time doubled. 

Still an experiment, the expanded two-hour time limit is expected to continue for at least most of the summer. 

The change was requested by downtown merchants and adopted by the Town Board at its May 20 meeting. Supervisor Ellen Calves said the Bedford Business Association "thinks this is the way to provide some more spaces where people can linger longer. If, in the end, businesses are upset that more parking isn’t turning over, we would end up not continuing with this.” 

In a memo to the Town Board, the association asked “for a pilot program to be started with these changes for three months. This way we can measure if this will help with the parking problems, with not enough longer-term parking spots.”

The memo, pointing to more establishments with longer parking needs, said, “All storefronts in the vicinity support this change (with one undecided) and we look forward to seeing this temporary program started.”

Calves told the board she had spoken that morning with the lone holdout. “He said, ‘Fine, let’s give it a try,’” the supervisor reported and asked approval of the three-month pilot.

“We will have to put up some signage,” Calves told the board, “and that would be the only cost to the town, to replace a few signs.”

The Town Board supported the change, 5-0, and within days signs had started being converted to reflect the new times for about 15 spaces on Old Post Road and a side street, Court Road.

Calves expects the expanded stays to be “a good change,” she told Halston Media in an email. “Often people go to a program at the library or have a meeting over coffee and plan to spend one hour, making their one-hour parking too short if they need a few minutes on either end of the visit.”

She hopes the expanded times “will encourage people to come to spend an hour or more and cut down on parking tickets when people are gathering and supporting local businesses and organizations.” 

“We will be asking businesses, police and residents to provide feedback during the pilot period,” Calves said, “so the Town Board has an understanding of whether to make the change permanent or to go back to shorter parking times in this location.”