GREENVILLE, S.C. (WSPA)–The City of Greenville is upgrading some of its parking garages and adding new electric vehicle spots across the city.
It may seem like just a little bit of spray paint, but it’s an effort the City of Greenville couldn’t ignore.
“It supports merchant activity, it supports visitor hotel activity, it supports business activity,” Bill Foster, the city facilities and parking administrator, said.
Foster says thoughtful parking plans help drive a city.
“We have 11 parking garages and we’re going to add 15 through the whole system,” he said.
He’s talking about the new electric car charging stations. They cost about $500 a piece, and they city is partnering with the State Department of Energy to add 15 new spaces for electric vehicles.
“We are now seeing them being used more and more,” Foster said.
Foster says the city has monitored the existing spots and determined that more charging pods are needed in certain areas to meet the demand.
“We’re going to add two in some locations, one in some other locations so we are able to increase the amount of charging stations across the city,” he said.
They’ll be strategically adding the new spots in garages where the charging stations get a lot of use and relying on the already existing spots at lesser used locations.
“We may not be adding some there, we may be adding two in another place that sees a lot,” Foster said.
Foster says he expects the demand for electric car spots to continue increasing, especially with many car manufacturers planning to produce more electric cars in the next several years.
“There’s a focused effort to putout more models, put out more vehicles, make the batteries go longer, make them work longer. So I think the public will buy into them more as we hoped they would and then we will be out in front of the curve,” Foster said.
