Parking meters cost $2.50 per hour and day rates range from $5 to $16. It’s less than commercial lots, which can cost upwards of $30 per day in San Diego.
Honestly, not a bad rate. But still, the fees should be set in order to not cause public backlash (or at least minimize it), since this sort of public backlash is what kills walkability projects. And they definitely shouldn’t be imposed to create a new revenue stream to fund the park.
In the first year, the fees should be ludicrously cheap. Just get people used to getting out of their car and paying the fee. Then increase the fee modestly the next year, and then increase it to a reasonable rate the year after that. And after that, it can be used as a lever in specific lots to empty them, so they can then be torn up and used for something more useful than parking.
At the same time, transit in the area should be improved to ensure people can still get to the park quickly and easily.
It’s accessible by transit, but not the most convenient access I’ve seen. And some sides of the park are a bit dangerous to access without a car. So it’s kind of a gray area. It’s not too difficult to access without driving but neither is it as easy as it could be.
Looking at Google maps, to get to the zoo from a random location in town it’s marginally faster to take the bus than walking, while driving takes a quarter the time, and parking is still about half the price of the bus if you’re there for an hour… Less than half if there’s more than one person in the car… 😅
So based on that I think the parking is way too cheap, and the bus is too expensive and slow…
100%. Sadly by US standards being reachable by transit at all is above average for a big park like this.
Nah. Sell residents a year-round pass at a steep discount, but half-measures are more easilly defeated.
The people who can make things happen at all or stop them want to see progress before they get bored. They’ll fund campaigns and such if there’s nothing to show for the fees, or you’ll hear nothing more about the backlash than an enthusiastic community member getting arrested at an open meeting.
There are of course always people getting arrested like so, but when you don’t want your side to look crazy, you make sure its “the protesters who obviously did nothing wrong” getting arrested that makes the news, or not-at-all.
