Free Sunday parking in busiest areas of San Diego on chopping block; evenings, too

Last November, voters in the city of San Diego rejected a ballot proposal that might have righted a $250 million-plus shortfall.

Since then, city hall has been scrambling to fill that gaping budget hole. One plan that's already been implemented is doubling the cost of metered parking. At some point, the city's going to start charging to pick up trash, of course — that one WAS passed at the ballot box — and San Diego is also mulling a nearly 20% increase in most city fees.

But neither of those is likely to make much of a dent in the fiscal problem, so officials are still searching for ways to increase revenue before, ultimately, they sharpen the budget knife.

Last week, potential parking fees charged at more than 16,000 spots around the city were being discussed after a city Parking Demand Management Study was presented to the city's Active Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The authors of the report discuss the prevailing wisdom that parking turnover is good for business — more customers at the meter means more customers at the counter, goes the theory.

The study took a look at usage of many of the city's most popular neighborhoods, examining when demand ebbs and flows, in an effort to determine whether the hours currently being charged for were enough, and, sadly for San Diegans' wallets, the answer seems to be no.

On Friday, the mayor's office sent over a statement about the study that reads, in part:

"Revenue generation was not the primary purpose of the study as parking meter revenue can only be spent for specific purposes within the area it is collected. However, paid parking is a highly desirable management tool of the parking inventory to ensure availability, turnover and utilization rates are within industry standards. While the study was developed for use in any part of the city where better management of the parking supply may be needed, focusing the analysis on areas where parking meters are already deployed allowed the consultant team to incorporate meter transactional data with field observations and metadata to provide a more robust framework for any future expansion of timed or metered parking in other communities. The report itself does not justify or dictate expansion of meters to any specific communities."

City officials and outside consults who contributed to the study limited themselves to a review of parking demand in the city’s existing Community Parking Districts (CPDs), as well as in Balboa Park and Mission Bay Park.

PARKING DISTRICT BREAKDOWNS

Here's a look at the study's recommendations for those communities. The language below is directly from the report.

Downtown

• "To manage this demand, it is recommended that paid parking be extended on Friday and Saturday to 11 p.m. and expanded to Sunday."

MidCity

"North Park, Normal Heights, and South Park (the western MidCity neighborhoods), and the College Area around San Diego State University to the east."

• "On ... core commercial-serving blocks, paid parking should be extended until 11 p.m."

Uptown

"Hillcrest, Mission Hills, Bankers Hill/Park West, University Heights, Middletown and the medical complex."

• "To manage this demand, it is recommended that paid parking be extended on Fridays and Saturdays to 11 p.m. and expanded to Sunday."

Old Town

"If paid parking is implemented, it is recommended that it be considered from 10 a.m.-11 p.m."

Pacific Beach

• "Pacific Beach had the highest average parking occupancy of all of the CPDs collected."
• "It is recommended that paid parking be extended on Fridays and Saturdays to 11 p.m. and extended to Sunday. As on-street paid parking rates are only 10% of what the private off-street facilities are charging, the city should increase rates more in the blocks surrounding these areas."
• "In areas where paid parking may not be appropriate, a four-hour time limit could be considered. A four-hour time limit provides enough flexibility for recreational access while still encouraging turnover of parking spaces to accommodate more visitors."

Mission Bay

• "To encourage parking demand to spread among the available parking facilities, it is recommended that the city implement paid parking in the highest demand facilities which reached or exceeded 100% occupancy, and it is not recommended that paid parking be implemented in the other facilities of Mission Bay where demand is not consistently high enough to require it."

Balboa Park

• "The city should consider managing demand with a combination of time limits, a parking guidance system and potentially paid parking."

• " ... remote parking facilities should remain free to provide a no-cost alternative to visitors for whom transportation alternatives may not be feasible and/or employees and volunteers of Balboa Park."

• " ... a mix of 2- to 4-hour time limits should be implemented in the highest demand parking lots."

• "In the zoo-serving parking lots, occupancy only exceeded 85% on Saturday, from 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. In these facilities, the city could coordinate with the zoo to implement a flat rate for parking, only during this peak period on weekends."

WHAT ABOUT THE AREAS NOT IN THE STUDY?

Notably absent from the study: Point Loma and La Jolla. In fact, the study only mentions those communities a few times, with all references to both areas contained in lists of neighborhoods where people traveled FROM, not TO. NBC 7 asked why the city is not putting paid parking on the map for those highly visited communities, which, at least anecdotally, also have little available street parking.

"La Jolla, I feel like, is a weird entity," said Jordan More, a fiscal and policy staff with the city's Office of the Independent Budget Analyst. "La Jolla is not covered by one of our parking districts now."

Neither is Point Loma, More said.

The analyst said both areas could be included, however, when the final proposal is before the city council.

"The reforms are coming right now," More said. "They want the reforms done in the next four or five months," adding, "You can study additional areas: The issue is this: Two things are required — the first is the establishment of a parking meter zone [a state law requirement] and then per city's policies, we also have required a community parking district to also be formed. Those are run by nonprofits."

Up until now, the city has only installed parking meters where a nonprofit operates them. No nonprofit, no meters.

"They don't operate the meters, but they do have the ability to tell us where they want the meters to be," More said. "They get a cut of the revenue and say what to do with it."

Those nonprofits all receive the same percentage of revenue — 45% (the rest goes to the city) — but they all receive different amounts of money based on how much revenue each district accrues.

"The direction city staff is prepared to go in is to allow a nonprofit — not going to change any [existing] agreements — but they can develop their own parking meter areas," More said.

One of the reforms being proposed it to do away with the nonprofit requirement, which would allow the city to draw boundaries.

No matter what happens, San Diego won't be able to close the budget gap at $2,50 an hour per meter. For one thing, the revenue generated by the districts has to stay/be spent in that zone on things like street sweeping, striping, fixing curbs and sidewalks, fixing traffic signals. While it technically could be spent on repaving, More said, that work has not been tied to parking district revenue in the past.

"I would … caution that we are not going to be able to solve the current budget gaps entirely with parking revenue," More said. "It can help but it's not a cure-all solution."

More said that he had not seen a full financial analysis of what the additional parking revenue would be, but he did say that San Diego's transportation operating budget is around $110 million, which already includes somewhere around $72 million in revenue from gas taxes, other parking, cap ex reimbursement and other sources.

"If, theoretically, I can use parking revenue, I could get to that $40 million," More said, "if parking revenue was not geographically restricted. That's as much revenue as I could generate and that would be it. That's the gap I can solve in transportation before I ran out. However, I do want to be clear: Since that is [currently] geographically restricted, I won't get to that much."

That $40 million, then, could be reapportioned to other departments, helping to close that $250 million gap. And the money spent in the districts would be noticed, More said.

"We have found that the areas that parking districts cover is where a lot of demand for new things — sidewalk improvements, bike path improvements — tend to be in the same areas," More said.

The mayor's office is examining all actions that would need to be adopted in order to incorporate the reforms, More said, all of which would need to be done prior to council approval and budget enactment in June.

PARKING ENFORCEMENT

Another recommendation of the study is likely to draw the attention of privacy advocates: Active use of license plate reader (LPR) technology to keep track of parked vehicles:

"LPR cameras that are mounted to enforcement vehicles that detect the license plates of vehicles, and when integrated with management software, can result in parking occupancy and duration both on-street and off-street. LPR provides other benefits to parking and law enforcement, including the ability to monitor time limits, parking permits, and detect hot-list and scofflaw vehicles."

The Parking Demand Management Study will be taken up again by San Diego officials next week by the city's Mobility Board.