The Village of Patchoge this week agreed to chip in $1,000 toward a pilot program that could help alleviate the village’s parking crunch on weekend nights.
Starting next month and running through July, free shuttle services will be provided for downtown employees so they can park farther away from work, freeing up spots for patrons.
“About a third of all parking is taken up by employees,” said village Trustee Jack Krieger. “And in Patchogue we have so many restaurants, which have significantly more employees than retail establishments.”
Krieger pointed out during Monday’s Village Board meeting that, while a shop might have four employees on a Friday evening, a restaurant could have 20 or 30.
“A lot of these employees are taking up good spots,” Krieger later told GreaterPatchogue.
Through the program, the employees would instead park at the railroad station lot and hop on a shuttle.
The program was initiated by members of the Greater Patchogue Chamber of Commerce restaurant committee, and will come in partnership with 511NY RideShare.
David Kennedy, the chamber’s executive director, said RideShare would provide an Enterprise Rental Care at a daily rate, and the chamber would hire a driver.
Kennedy estimated the program could cost around $3,500 for the few test months.
Recently, chamber members suggested the village could help defray those costs to the chamber by chipping in some funding from the village parking meters program.
The vote to do so was unanimous among Village Board members Monday.
“And we’re very thankful,” Kennedy said, adding that details still need to be hammered out.
“We need to figure out a route,” he said. “But we are going to sit down to put our heads together to make this happen, and hopefully it does lead to a more permanent employee shuttle, to try to get the employees out of the more central parking area and into the outskirts.”
The village’s longer term plans, as previously reported, include using the meter revenues to purchase and clear blighted properties to create more parking spaces, with the potential for piecing together enough cleared acreage for a parking garage.
Photo: Cars parked in the new spaces created along Church Street. (file photo)
