SAN DIEGO – The city recently announced that parking meter hours will be extended by at least two hours, including Sundays, within commercial areas and in community parking districts like the one in Pacific Beach.
PB’s parking district was initiated as a year-long pilot study, hoping to raise revenues to pursue community projects such as the Beach Bug shuttle, which ultimately proved unsustainable.
Given that parking demand and inflation are both presently at extremely high levels, Beach & Bay Press conducted a community shout-out to solicit how locals feel about PB’s parking district. We asked residents whether the parking district has lived up to prior expectations, posing these questions:
How has PB’s parking district worked out? Has it served its intended purpose of raising revenues for local business and community improvement? Has it driven people to park in residential neighborhoods, where it has become problematic, as some feared?
“I would say not very well,” was Gordon Froehlich’s assessment of the parking district. “The shuttle program sponsored by the district was a complete failure and lost a bunch of money. The district has little say in parking matters in Pacific Beach. Meter occupancy rate has been lower than necessary to be successful.”
Froehlich, a member of the Parking Advisory Board, said his fears that metered parking in PB would drive people to park in residential areas were realistic.
“Residential streets near the meter area have become parking lots for the business district,” Froehlich said. “Try driving down Felspar, Hornblend, and adjacent north /south streets to see where the business visitors park. Many residences without off-street parking now have a longer distance to walk from their car to home.
“The parking district has received no funds for improvement projects. We need to go back to ‘no’ meters. We had fewer problems when we had none.”
Concerning the parking district being a one-year trial program, Froehlich said: “When the one year was completed, the city and the parking district would not talk about it. As far as I know, there never was an evaluation. And others had asked in the meetings about the one-year trial. No talk about it. Finally, at one meeting, it was announced that the trial period was over. No conclusions were made.”
Ryan Stock, president of beautifulPB, a community nonprofit seeking community beautification and sustainable environmental enhancement, had a different take than Froehlich.
“Paid parking is still a smart policy and the core outcome never was the money: It keeps spaces turning over so customers can park, and it makes sure public space isn’t monopolized for free,” said Stock, a PB Parking Board member speaking for himself.
He offered a caveat: “The benefits should come back to the neighborhood – not disappear into City Hall.”
PB resident Bill Zent didn’t think metered parking had positive effects, because “you can reload them and leave your car there all day,” he said. “They are not forcing turnover of parking spots. In addition, the screens are so bad that you cannot read them on many of the units.”
Zent also questioned the sincerity of PB’s pilot-meter program. “If this were supposed to be a one-year experiment, where is the financial data to support these meters and extending the time?” he asked.
Zent listed the following factors as issues needing further consideration: employee cost to manage these versus revenue; equipment cost plus sure cost; cost to install meters and maintain meters; revenue from meters; and revenue from citations.
“My instincts tell me we are probably upside down,” he concluded.
“We need residential parking permits because the parking meters have already made it more difficult for residents to park in their neighborhoods,” noted PB resident Marcie Beckett. “It will only get worse with the increase in parking meter fees and hours.”
“The side streets are all parked up with people avoiding the meters,” said Reena Kaplowitz of Mission Bay on social media.
“To have them now add Sunday too is ridiculous. No studies have been done on the aftereffects. It’s a major inconvenience and does not seem to be helping PB businesses since we see all the shuttered storefronts on Garnet. PB residents definitely should have free parking.”
“This was supposed to be a pilot program,” argued Marie N. of PB Southwest Central.
“They’ll go ahead and let hundreds and hundreds of illegal vehicles sleep in our beach and bay parking lots, but they’ll go ahead and raise the prices and raise the hours that this will be enforced. This is selective discriminatory enforcement for people who have hard-working jobs and can pay. This should be illegal.”
Susie C, of Riviera Sail Bay, voiced a different concern about the potential ill effects of paid metered parking. “This is detrimental to PB restaurants’ take-out business because customers won’t pay $2.50 for a meter (or risk getting a ticket) just to run in for two minutes to get their take-out order.
“They’ll go elsewhere,” she warned.
