City considers plug and pay for electric cars

A solitary parking meter – charging $1.50 an hour – could be a beacon in Edmonds’ vast sea of free downtown parking.

A single, lonely, pay-for parking space may seem impossibly unpopular, but proponents of the meter – which would double as Snohomish County’s first public electric car charging station – say it will be a hit.

A $5,000 proposal for the meter-turned-charging station will be presented to the City Council’s community services and development services committee meeting Sept. 11 at 7 p.m. in the Public Safety Building.

The proposal would create the charging station at a stall in the Public Safety Complex parking lot, near the entrance by Fifth Avenue and Bell Street, officials said.

“Somebody has to step up and provide a little bit of leadership in this area, and perhaps Edmonds can,” said committee chair Richard Marin, a board member with Sound Transit, and a long-time advocate for alternative transportation.

“I think if we can find it affordable, then we ought to certainly give it a shot,” Marin said.

Edmonds’ charging station would accommodate cars that use 220-volt and 110-volt plugs, officials said. The station itself would likely be used equipment purchased from an RV park, said public works director Noel Miller, who helped develop the proposal.

If the proposal passes through committee, it could be voted on by Edmonds’ City Council in the near future.

It would be an exciting development for electric cars in Edmonds, said Stephen Bernheim, an Edmonds lawyer and electric car owner.

Bernheim started pushing the plug-in station concept in 2006, and although he is now running against Marin as a candidate for Edmonds’ City Council, Bernheim is supportive of Marin’s work on the plug-in station, he said.

Activists like Bernheim have long seen electric cars as one potential solution to what critics call America’s dependence on foreign oil. Electric engines use energy more efficiently than gasoline engines, and burn zero oil.

As the cars try to gain a foothold in the Puget Sound region, however, governments have been slow to react, in part because giving away electricity is legally problematic, officials said this week.

By charging for, well, charging, however, Edmonds could work its way around that problem.

The parking space would be free for any drivers who weren’t plugged in, but cars that were using electricity would be expected to pay, and could be ticketed if they didn’t, Miller said.

As city staff built their proposal, they didn’t have many Washington examples to follow, he said. Even in California, the difficulty in giving away electricity means most plug-in stations are offered by private companies, Miller said.

According to the Seattle Electric Vehicles Association, the only public plug-in stations in the Puget Sound region are in the city of Seattle. Electric cars can charge at stations at Seattle’s City Hall and the Seattle Public Library, SEVA’s Web site shows.

Including privately owned plug-ins, there are between 20 and 30 stations electric car owners can use in King and Snohomish Counties, SEVA officials said.

Because most electric cars can travel at least 50 miles on a single charge, most electric car owners can already use their cars when traveling around Puget Sound, said Steven Lough, SEVA’s president.

If Edmonds were to put in a station, that might help turn the city into something of an electric-car destination, Lough said.

“There aren’t that many people that would need to charge, but (the stations) are kind of like a security blanket,” he said. “They help put people’s minds at ease.

“To have a station will help the sale and popularity of the vehicles,” Lough said.

Just how popular a $5,000 plug-in station would be in Edmonds is not known.

Marin had hoped the stations would cost a little less, he said.

Bernheim created a plug-in station outside his downtown law office for about $120. He had an electrician create a normal 110-volt plug on the exterior wall of his building, he said.

The city’s station will be more expensive because it needs to transform the 480-volt power source from the Public Safety building into something usable for both 220-volt and 110-volt cars, said public works director Miller.