READING, Pa. \u2013 Reading City Council voted Monday night to apply for a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation multimodal grant in the amount of $3 million.<\/p>\n
The purpose of the funds would be for a proposed project to convert the existing bus bay configurations into more efficient on-street parking that would increase parking availability and improving the overall streetscape.<\/p>\n
The multimodal grant, if awarded, requires a 30% local match, which would be supported by the capital improvements projects budget.<\/p>\n
The proposed project would maintain mid-block crosswalks to provide a safer and more accessible pedestrian area along Penn Street.<\/p>\n
The improvements would strengthen the downtown vitality by enhancing walkability and facilitating convenient access to local storefronts and services, the city says.<\/p>\n
The project is consistent with other downtown corridor projects, including the comprehensive plan of 2000, the Reading downtown strategic plan of 2001 and the city\u2019s improvement zone plan of 2024.<\/p>\n
Moratorium on parking tickets<\/p>\n
In other business, council voted to adopt an ordinance to place a six-month moratorium on the issuance of parking violations for the \u2018no parking\u2019 restrictions at the intersections at North Fifth\u00a0Street and Oley Street and North Fifth\u00a0Street and Douglass Street.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Chris Miller said the action is meant to be consistent with a similar ordinance approved last year to place a six-month moratorium on parking fines associated with the no-parking zones on Hampden Boulevard at its intersections with College Avenue and Richmond, Amity and Perry streets.<\/p>\n
In both districts, the issue came about from complaints from residents who feel the parking restrictions are too restrictive.<\/p>\n
Miller said he estimates that the no-parking zones created at the intersection resulted in the removal of 12 to 16 parking spaces at each of the intersections on North Fifth\u00a0Street.<\/p>\n
Conditional use<\/p>\n
Also Monday, council voted 4-2 to deny a conditional use application that had requested the conversion of a single-family dwelling at 1123 N. 12th\u00a0St. into a two-unit rental property.<\/p>\n
Council held a public hearing on the matter last month.<\/p>\n
Councilmembers Vanessa Campos and Rafael Nunez casted dissenting votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 Reading City Council voted Monday night to apply for a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation multimodal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1089,5541,50111,1094,128,1095,130,129,3932],"class_list":["post-103588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-chris-miller","tag-parking","tag-penndot-multimodal-grant","tag-rafael-nunez","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-council","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-vanessa-campos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}