If you're heading to the beach in San Diego, you can count on a few things: beautiful views, lots of sun and free parking.
And it doesn’t take long to find folks who feel it should stay that way.
“Come on, dude, you shouldn’t pay to park down here,” said Pyper Vargas, who was hanging out in Pacific Beach on Wednesday. “This is why we pay the big bucks down here.”
Kevin Reeves, another PB beachgoer, was even more specific.
“I believe that parking should be free at the beach,” Reeves said. “I don't think that is the way that San Diego should find their revenue.”
Vargas and Reeves have allies in high places. San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava and Councilman Raul Campillo have proposed an ordinance that would ban paid parking at city-owned beach lots ... forever.
“What Councilmember Campillo and I wanted to do was to really draw a line in the sand, if you will, that says, 'OK, you want to start thinking about (revenue)? One place we do not want you to think about it is paid parking at the beaches and bays of San Diego,'” LaCava said.
But if you travel up the Southern California coast, you'll find that San Diego is the exception. Paid parking is the norm at Orange County and Los Angeles beaches, as well as state beaches like Torrey Pines.
And this ordinance is coming amid serious budget challenges that city of San Diego budget analyst Charles Modica said will only get worse in coming years.
It got so bad this year that the city closed about half the public bathrooms in Mission Bay Park. They were later reopened after public outcry.
If LaCava's and Campillo's ordinance passes the full council, it will close the door permanently on a potentially large revenue stream.
According to a KPBS analysis of the city’s parking demand management study and the Parkopedia app, there are 8,221 public parking spaces in the city’s beach and bay lots. That doesn’t include ADA parking spaces, which remain free in other places the city charges for parking.
If the city charged $2.50 an hour to park in beach lots, which is what the city now charges for metered street parking, it could collect up to $205,000 each day, according to the KPBS analysis.
That adds up to more than $600,000 for a three-day summer holiday weekend when lots are nearly certain to be full. And the number would approach $6 million when just counting summer season weekends from Memorial Day through Labor Day, the analysis showed.
Over the course of a full year, the city could collect more than $37.5 million even with a conservative estimate of lots being, on average, half full.
Introducing new revenue options, however, is off the table for now, according to LaCava.
“When we adopted that budget in June, there was really a commitment by the mayor as well as the city council that said, 'This time we're not going to look at revenue, new revenue ideas, we're just going to cut services so we can deliver a balanced budget,’” LaCava said.
LaCava said some of those revenue ideas in the past did not go over very well with the public.
Paid parking at Balboa Park was wildly unpopular when it was rolled out earlier this year. And after public outcry, along with the threat of lawsuits from the Lincoln Club over that and the city’s trash fee, city leaders backtracked and parking at the park will again be free in 2027.
Campillo said the proposed beach parking ordinance is a direct result of that experience.
“Together, the Council President and I brought this item forward to make sure the city learns from the lessons that the parking fees at Balboa Park pointed out,” Campillo said in a statement.
Yet Balboa Park is in need of roughly $1 billion of maintenance and capital improvements, according to KPBS’ nonprofit Public Matters partner inewsource. Paid parking was in part supposed to alleviate that deficit.
Paid parking at city parks also isn’t uncommon in California. Visitors to Griffith Park in Los Angeles and the Presidio in San Francisco pay for parking.
Parking is free at Orange County’s Great Park — for now. The city of Irvine, facing its own budget deficit, is looking at a paid parking proposal.
Back at Pacific Beach, Vargas said he would reconsider paid parking if it meant the bathrooms would always be open. “Yeah that’d be a good trade-off, yes,” Vargas said. “Because everybody has to pee!”
Is free parking an equity issue?
For some, the issue is more than a simple revenue problem. Dr. Marcella Bothwell, Chair of the Pacific Beach Planning Group, said free parking was essential for equitable public access to city beaches. Campillo also said the ordinance was about protecting access to public spaces.
But the lowest income San Diegans don’t have cars. According to the San Diego Metropolitan Transit system (MTS), more than 70% of their riders are from “car light” households with fewer cars than people, and more than half have an annual household income under $60,000 per year.
Countywide, 38% of transit riders do not have a vehicle available, according to the San Diego Association of Governments, or SANDAG.
Meanwhile, six bus routes run to or near city beaches. But it takes a long time to get to the beach by bus. Only Route 30, running from Old Town to UTC through Pacific Beach and La Jolla, arrives more often than every 30 minutes.
“During the annual service changes for the summer, which happen in June, MTS moderately increases service to bus routes that serve beach communities in order to accommodate more riders,” said MTS Public Relations Specialist Hector Zermeno.
Zermeno also said the agency is conducting a “comprehensive operational analysis” to identify future service adjustments.
Advocates said more San Diego residents could get to the beach on a bike instead of driving if the city and county networks of safe bike lanes were more complete and connected.
Earlier this year, Pacific Beach residents renewed their calls for traffic safety improvements following the death of a child riding a bike.
“We've had several people get killed this year (in Pacific Beach) due to traffic fatalities,” David Cuthell, a Pacific Beach resident who advocates for safer streets, said. “And the more vehicular traffic that you have in a community, the more of a risk you have for these kinds of things.”
Cuthell said he’s noticed a lot of people biking, walking, and finding other ways to get to the beach from places like Pacific Beach, but those options are much more difficult for people who live on the other side of Interstate 5.
“The Transportation Department certainly supports equitable beach access and in the last few years has installed separated bike lanes and new sidewalk(s) in the Mission Bay and other beach areas,” City of San Diego public information officer Anthony Santacroce said.
Another reason so many San Diegans need to drive to the beach is because it’s so expensive to live nearby. The city’s Housing Element Assessment of Fair Housing shows coastal neighborhoods are wealthier – and whiter – than more inland neighborhoods.
In City Council Districts one and 2, which cover beach neighborhoods from La Jolla to Point Loma, fewer homes were permitted between 2018 and 2024 than in any other district except District 4, which covers neighborhoods in southeast San Diego. KPBS has previously reported how rents rise slower in places where more homes are permitted.
The Pacific Beach community plan was last updated in 1995, with an update in 2019 for the Balboa Avenue Station Area specific plan ahead of the opening of the Mid-Coast trolley extension.
Public battles over housing developments, like one proposed on Turquoise Street, show coastal neighborhoods aren’t eager to support more homes in their backyards.
