Is Parking Adequate?
511 Contra Costa, the program charged with promoting new ways to reduce vehicle use, has praised Sufism Reoriented's parking program as a model for the future, saying it "could be a showpiece for Contra Costa County." Contra Costa County now encourages "Traffic Demand Management Plans" (TDMPs) to reduce vehicle use, and beginning in 2007, members of Sufism Reoriented began to take part in a transportation-management plan identical to the TDMP we have outlined in our Land Use Application. Nearly fifty percent of our members have committed in writing to walk to church in all weather. The remaining members have committed to carpool or park at and take a shuttle from The Meher Schools.
This plan has been highly successful. Plans for our new sanctuary call for seventy-four parking spaces. From January through June 2011, the average for combined church and school parking was sixty-three on Friday nights and forty-eight on Sunday nights, compared to sixty-eight and fifty in 2008. The highest count was sixty-nine. Although overflow parking at the school can accommodate sixty-four vehicles, an average of only nine were parked there during regular Friday services in the first six months of 2011, or about fourteen percent of capacity.
During the annual celebration at the church to which guests are invited, parking at the school and the shuttle service absorb the overflow with ample spaces to spare. The highest count since we began monitoring parking at this three-day event in 2008 was ninety-three that year, sixty-four at the church and twenty-nine at the school. In 2010 the count was eighty-two. The 2011 celebration has not been held yet.
The success of our program to reduce traffic confirms that the space allotted for parking at our new sanctuary will be adequate.