SLO might decrease downtown parking prices — but there’s a catch

San Luis Obispo is considering a potentially radical reversal in its parking program after it faced intense pushback from community members and business owners last year.

The city could soon charge less to park downtown.

How exactly it does that — or if it does at all — however, is still up in the air.

On Tuesday, the San Luis Obispo City Council is set to finally review a long-anticipated parking rate study that examined the city’s pricing structure, infrastructure needs and more. The study offered some preliminary recommendations for how San Luis Obispo could best balance its funding needs with the demands of the community to make downtown parking more affordable.

At the meeting, the council is expected to consider three approaches: Continue to offer one hour of free parking in the structures, prioritize the lowest rates possible or do some amalgam of the two.

All three options, meanwhile, call for cheaper monthly permits in the parking structures, dropping from a price of $85 per month to $45. They would also not limit the number of these permits available at first as staff attempts to gauge interest, according to a city staff report.

The study also had several other preliminary recommendations for the city.

Those included going down to just one mobile payment vendor, rather than the three the city offers now; expanding the on-street parking time limit from two to three hours; and replacing the gateless technology at 842 Palm St. structure with a more traditional gated option.

Why is SLO considering dropping downtown parking rates?

The city’s rollout of new technology last summer was one of several precipitating factors that culminated in a tense and at times emotional City Council meeting in November where community members blasted the city’s parking changes.

During the meeting, several local business owners and residents spoke out against the confusing changes, from difficulties navigating the myriad of apps to losing the free first hour of parking in the structures and — probably most importantly — how the increase in rates nearly doubled the cost to park downtown.

“Your parking policy has been a disaster for us and everyone downtown,” Erica Hamilton, creative director for Blackwater boutique, said during the meeting. “Salvage what’s left before you turn downtown into a wasteland. Act now or be remembered as the council that killed downtown SLO.”

The City Council ultimately voted to restore that free first hour of parking at its three garages and delay further rate changes as it waited for the results of its parking rate study.

In the following months, it contracted with Dixon Resources Unlimited for the study and then conducted a series of community forums and outreach efforts aimed at getting input on what residents felt were appropriate solutions for the city’s parking needs.

The effort included an online community survey that during the four weeks it was open garnered more than 2,700 responses.

A notable finding from that survey was that the majority of community members said cost was “the most important factor when looking for parking” while a majority of business owners said they believed the previous rate increase “led to a drastic decrease in business revenue.”

Most business owners also noted that they do not provide parking for employees, and their employees typically have a hard time finding parking nearby, according to the report.

What are the 3 parking rate options the SLO City Council will consider?

The City Council has three possible scenarios to consider as it decides how best to balance the community’s desires with its own funding needs.

The first option would prioritize keeping the first hour of parking in downtown structures free, but to pay for that, would continue to charge on-street rates of $4 per hour in the downtown core and $3 per hour further out.

Under this option, the cost of parking in a structure would drop slightly from $3 per hour to $2.50 and from a daily maximum of $12 to $10.

The second option would prioritize lower parking rates across the board — but would drop the first free hour of parking.

With that, the cost of parking on the street would drop to $2.75 per hour in the downtown core and $2.25 per hour farther out. Parking rates in the structures would also go down, dropping to $2 per hour with a daily max of $8.

The third and final option is a mix of the two previous options, what Dixon called the “balanced approach” in its study.

Under this plan, on-street parking rates would drop to $3 and $2.50 per hour, while the structures would cost $2 per hour with a daily max of $8. This option also does away with the free first hour of parking.

None of the options proposes changes to the enforcement hours for either on-street or structure parking, which run until 9 p.m. daily. They would also not change the cost of the 10-hour street parking monthly permit.

Dixon in its study advocated for the third option, saying it “prioritizes lower rates across all parking areas instead of free parking in certain areas or at certain times.”

“Parking industry best practices show that offering free parking can be a detriment to downtown businesses,” the study read. “When free parking is offered for a limited time (e.g. first hour free in the structures), this encourages parkers to make quicker trips and to leave before the free time period expires.”

The study did note that this might be a difficult change to stomach however, since the first free hour subsidy “has been provided since the first structure opened in the 1980s and is now synonymous with downtown parking for many residents, business owners and regular visitors.”

At the request of community members during outreach, Dixon did model what would happen if the city kept its free hour of parking and also reduced rates, according to the staff report.

The study found that if the city reduced street parking rates to $3 per hour in the core and $2 in the outer areas, while also dropping structure parking to $2 per hour, the city would lose almost $1.3 million per year, “which immediately jeopardizes the solvency of the Parking Fund,” the staff report said.

What happens next?

The San Luis Obispo City Council will consider the rate changes at its special meeting Tuesday. The meeting will take place in Council Chambers at 990 Palm St. at 5:30 p.m.

Whatever changes are approved would likely go into effect July 8, according to the city staff report, with additional changes potentially coming in the winter.