A new parking plan for downtown Wareham could increase safety and make accessing Main Street businesses easier.

The Monday proposal was part of a yearlong parking study conducted by consultant firm Nelson Nygaard that found while there is no shortage of parking in downtown Wareham, those spaces could be better utilized to improve the use of businesses downtown.

The proposal was given by Lisa Jacobson of Nelson Nygaard, who identified certain key areas of changes in the proposal. These included opportunities for shared parking lots between businesses, including more off-street parking at the Post Office, increasing and updating the signage in the downtown area and avoiding the creation of paid parking.

Jacobson said that there are about 1,350 parking spaces in downtown Wareham, including on-street, off-street public and private parking. She said that while the majority of those spaces are restricted, parking in the area is underused.

Jacobson said at peak hours, her firm measured that parking on Main Street was about 35 percent full and parking on Merchants Way behind Main Street was 54 percent full.

"According to the data, we didn't see a place where more parking was needed," she said.

Jacobson noted that on Merchants Way, all of the spaces are owned by the town, and although some businesses have put up signs restricting parking to patrons of certain businesses, anyone can legally park there.

Jacobson said that while there might not be parking directly in front of someone's destination, there is certainly parking just a short walk away. She said there was never more than a handful of cars in the Pezzoli Square parking lot while the firm was doing site reviews.

In an online survey conducted last month by Nelson Nygaard, 64 percent of people (out of 50 respondents) said that their primary purpose for coming downtown was to run errands. Many people also asked for a way to provide more parking at the Post Office on Main Street.

Jacobson proposed GAF Engineering, adjacent to the Post Office, share it's 35-space parking lot as an example of shared parking between businesses. Another example of she made of combined lots was taking down the small wooden fence in the Cumberland Farms parking lot and formalizing the adjacent dirt parking lot. That would significantly increase the number of spaces there as well as possibly entice business owners to set up shop in one of the vacant buildings next door to that lot, according to Jacobson.

The study cost $20,000 and was paid for by the Community Economic and Development Authority through the Community Development Block Grant program, which provides federal grant money.

"We did this study because at the last set of public forums people were saying we didn't have enough parking," said CEDA Director Sal Pina "So we went and did a study to find out if that was true. We didn't just pull a study out of a hat."

He said that CEDA can only do certain things with the block grant money it receives and that the grants provide for projects like the village streetscape improvements.

"There are a lot of things CEDA has the opportunity to do that the town doesn't," he said.

Many residents at the meeting raised concerns with the infamous "bumpouts" that line Main Street. Some said they make street parking more difficult, others said that pedestrians cross the road at all different points and not always in the crosswalks.

Jacobson said that research shows bumpouts slow down traffic and greatly reduce the instances of vehicle and pedestrian accidents. She also said that while it was likely not a bad thing that the bumpouts cause drivers to spread out and use different roads such as High Street or Merchants Way, many interviewees complained about the speed and danger of Merchants Way.

Jacobson presented a long-term plan that would formalize Merchants Way as a two-way road, create sidewalks and a public square, and change all of the parking spots to parallel with the road.

This would likely only come into effect many years down the line if Wareham saw a large positive swing in the economy downtown, but Jacobson said the plan would make Merchants Way safer and more of a secondary Main Street than a parking lot.

Based on public input from the meeting, Nelson Nygaard said he would create a final report that will be delivered to the Board of Selectmen at a later date.