The San Luis Obispo City Council has adopted a new Downtown Parking Technology Roadmap, an action plan to evaluate and update existing parking technology downtown.
The city collected data over the past year and conducted a parking rate study to create the roadmap.
Some community members agree that more could be done to improve parking in downtown San Luis Obispo.
“It would be nice to have video cameras,” George Sullivan said.
“A fence around the upper floor [of the parking structure] is a good idea. It's a safety reason,” Tom Martin said.
From confusing pay-to-park apps...
“The less I use the app the happier I am,” Sullivan said.
To being frustrated in parking garages...
“The meter over there where you put your money in — totally not user-friendly. I can't understand a thing,” Martin said.
But improvements are coming.
The city allocated just under $2 million for the new projects.
“We heard the community and we're going to make parking more easy, accessible, and convenient for the community and visitors,” said Donna King, San Luis Obispo City Parking Program Manager.
They plan to update all three parking structures with a new gated system that would allow the community to pay as they leave.
“Starting with the 842 Palm garage, the Chinatown garage, which is currently gateless,” King said.
There will be new upgrades to all of the downtown pay stations.
The city is in the process of reducing the number of mobile pay apps from three to only one.
“We have selected pay by phone as our single app so we will be doing the roll-out of the new app at the start of 2025,” King said.
There will be security improvements in parking garages, as well.
“We have already done some improvements to garage lighting to make it feel safer and inviting and we are looking at doing security fencing on the top of the garages,” King said.
The city hopes to install security cameras in the future.
There will be community discussions throughout the whole process.
The technology changes will be implemented in a phased approach over the next 12-18 months.
