Treasure Island to charge for parking on side streets in Sunset Beach
TREASURE ISLAND, Fla. - It can be tough, almost impossible some days, to snag a parking spot at the beach. In one week, visitors will have to pay to park on side streets in Sunset Beach.
"It is a total parade," Shirley, a Sunset Beach resident of 25 years, said. "On weekends, they drive continuously up and down the street, wanting to know if they can park in certain places. They park in front of driveways. They park going the wrong direction. They can only park on one side, which of course makes sense because if you have an emergency, a fire truck or an ambulance cannot get through these narrow streets with cars parked on both sides."
The solution, city officials say, is to charge for the parking.
"There's been a lot of issues in Sunset Beach," Treasure Island Spokesperson Jason Beisel said. "If you've been in that neighborhood, it's very narrow. The roadways are very narrow. There's a lot of times our emergency vehicles can't get through the area. Our public works vehicles can't get through the area because of so many cars onto the road. So, it has been many years of discussion on what you can do to improve that area."
Starting next Monday, visitors will pay $5.00 an hour 24/7 to park on side streets compared to $3.75 in the city lots. The hope, Beisel said, is that the higher price will deter visitors from parking on the side streets, and they’ll park in the lots instead, freeing them up for safety reasons and for neighbors.
"These small cottages, a lot of them do not have driveways and do not have a place to park themselves," Shirley said.
"An easy solution would have been to eliminate parking altogether on side streets. We can't do that. In order for us to get federal funding, county funding to do beach renourishment or anything on the beach, we have to have a certain amount of public parking," he said.
Residents will still use their parking passes. Residents can buy up to two Treasure Island City parking passes for $45 a year and go online to add their visitors’ license plates to their accounts too.
All other visitors will pay on the ParkMobile app using their license plate numbers. Sunset Beach is the first area in Treasure Island that they’re testing out the license plate reader technology rather than a meter or a numbered spot. It’s technology that most neighboring cities use.
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"This could help lower the cost of the residential parking passes because it's less paperwork and it's less manpower for us to have to deal with those parking passes. So, this is going to end up being a benefit to citizens, and it's going to benefit the residents here who would have to pay less for parking if that is the decision the commission decides to go down," Beisel said.
Residents say they want people to visit, but say there’s only so much space when it comes to parking.
"I guess it’s all trial and error like a lot of things are. We’ve had meters. We’ve had no meters. We’ve had free parking. There’s only so much space on this beach," she said.
Beisel said they hope to have the license plate reader system city-wide by the end of the year.
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