San Diego recently raised its parking meter rates from $1.25 to $2.50 per hour to help close a budget deficit of more than a quarter billion dollars. And more reforms to parking policy could be on the horizon.
City staffers last week presented a City Council committee an analysis of more than 16,000 public parking spaces in meter zones and regional attractions such as Balboa Park and Mission Bay Park. The "Parking Demand Management Study" found, unsurprisingly, that parking is hardest to find when it's given away for free.
The city is now contemplating a list of reforms aimed at increasing the turnover of parking spaces, especially where demand is highest. Included among the ideas is an end to free metered parking on Sundays, when private lots raise their rates because street parking is so hard to find.
Also on the table is dynamic pricing — changing the hourly rate at parking meters based on demand. For example, meters around Petco Park could get more expensive during ball games. Rates could also get cheaper when demand drops.
"That's what dynamic pricing is all about, is trying to match up that supply and demand to create the optimal situation and utilization of the curbspace," said Jordan More, a staffer with the city's Office of the Independent Budget Analyst.
The office, which functions as a watchdog of the city's General Fund, has emerged as a champion of parking policy reform. When voters narrowly rejected a sales tax measure last November, Independent Budget Analyst Charles Modica urged the city to raise parking meter rates to $2.50 per hour — the maximum allowed under the municipal code — to mitigate the need for draconian budget cuts and protect core city services like road repair.
The move is expected to generate an additional $4 million by the end of the current fiscal year on June 30, and another $9.6 million in the following fiscal year.
"The city has large budget problems," More said. "There's only so many levers we can pull. So to the extent that there are levers the city can pull to solve these problems, we should pull them."
Henry Grabar, a staff writer for Slate and author of the book "Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World," said cities across the country struggle to find the right price for street parking, leading to bad outcomes for everyone on the road.
"One thing that happens when parking is underpriced is that it tends to fill up really quick," Graba said. "And so these spaces where there's a lot of demand for parking, but it's not properly priced, generate thousands and thousands of miles of driving every year from people looking for parking spaces."
Grabar's book chronicles a notorious case study of poor parking management. In 2008, the city of Chicago was facing a budget deficit. So then-Mayor Richard Daily struck a deal with a group of Wall Street investors. In exchange for a one-time payment of $1.15 billion, the investors could lease the city's parking meters for 75 years. Grabar said the investors promptly jacked up parking rates and made back their investment in no time.
"I think the worst part for Chicago is even if the investors recognized the market-clearing price for these meters, the money that was raised is going right into the investors' pockets rather than being funneled into improvements in the city of Chicago," Grabar said.
So far, all the parking reforms contemplated by city officials are limited to commercial streets and regional attractions. But competition for curb space is a growing challenge on residential and mixed-use streets, too — especially as more housing gets built without dedicated off-street parking.
San Diego has a small residential parking permit program created in 1977 to prevent employees at major job centers like San Diego State University and the two hospitals in Hillcrest from parking on nearby residential streets.
The city currently charges $9 per year — or $0.75 per month — for a residential parking permit. SDSU, in contrast, charges students $42 per month. Parking spaces at new housing developments in North Park cost $150 per month or more.
Jordan More said as the lines between residential and commercial streets blur, San Diego may need to consider revamping its residential parking program as well.
"I would say it goes on a long list of policies that probably should be looked into when we get around to it," More said.
