Citywide
Photo: knorby/Flickr
San Francisco’s business corridors are starting to reopen — which means that parking meters are coming back online.
On Tuesday, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) announced that parking control officers will begin to reprioritize regular meter enforcement on Monday, July 13.
While meter enforcement was never officially discontinued by the city, the SFMTA’s parking control officers have been reassigned to directing traffic near hospitals and COVID-19 testing sites since mid-March.
“Now, we need to restore our meter programs and prioritize enforcement to keep San Francisco moving,” the agency said in a blog post. “Demand for on-street parking is continuing to increase, especially while transit service is limited.”
That means restoring normal meter rates, which had been bumped down to $0.50/hour in April.
They’ll return to their pre-COVID levels as of this Monday, July 6 — but to ease the pain a bit, they’ll be discounted by $0.50/hour across the board. (The average meter rate in SF prior to COVID-19 was $2.50/hour.)
Meter time limits were put on pause in April, but are set to resume on Monday as well. About 75% of the city’s meters have time limits of fewer than four hours.
While street cleaning enforcement returned last month, the city still won’t enforce residential parking permits and neighborhood time limits for the time being. The goal is to make sure sheltering residents don’t have to go outside as often to move their cars.
With many San Franciscans concerned about contaminated surfaces, the SFMTA emphasized that customers can feed the meter via mobile app or phone. A list of all San Francisco parking meters and their current prices is available online.