City Increases Parking Fee for Chargers Games to $5
San Diego Chargers fans will pay $5 per car and $10 for motor homes to park at professional football games beginning this fall, the City Council decided Monday.
Last season, the rates were $3 per car and $6 per motor home.
The San Diego city manager’s office proposed the new fees as a way to increase parking revenues, as well as alleviate traffic jams before and after Chargers games at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. Council members approved the increase by a 5-3 vote after a short debate.
Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who voted against the increase along with Councilwomen Abbe Wolfsheimer and Celia Ballesteros, said she opposed the increases because city taxpayers are already angry over how much they have to shell out to attend sporting events.
“It’s just too much, too quickly, in my opinion,” O’Connor said. “I’m not prepared to bite it all off with one fell swoop.”
The $5 fee replaces the two-tiered system that charged $6 for the 4,200 spaces in the so-called “inner ring” closest to the stadium, and $3 for the remaining 14,300 spaces. Under both the current system and new system, motor homes are charged twice the rate because they take up two parking spaces.
Blamed for Congestion
The current system causes traffic congestion because those who pay the $6 fee are fed into the stadium parking lot through the Mission Village entrance, Deputy City Manager Jack McGrory told council members.
The overwhelming majority of the traffic flow, however, must be handled through the two remaining entrances, a circumstance that translates into long waits for most fans as they enter and leave the parking lot, McGrory said.
Establishing the uniform parking fee will change that, McGrory said, because it will allow the stadium staff to distribute the traffic flow more evenly through all three exits. It will also allow those who arrive early for Chargers games to claim a parking space closer to the stadium, he said.
“We want to open them all up equally, so we have an equal flow,” McGrory said before the council discussion of the matter.
In addition to the new fee, the city manager’s office recommended putting limits on tailgate parties in the inner ring to help ease the parking crunch. Instead of the current policy of allowing people to take up two parking spaces for partying until an hour before game time, tailgate parties will be restricted to a single parking space in the inner ring, McGrory said.
The two-space rule, however, will remain intact for those who park outside the ring.
More Hiring Pledged
Ace Parking, which owns the stadium’s parking concession, has agreed to employ more people to direct traffic during Chargers games, McGrory said.
McGrory said the city manager’s office arrived at the $5 fee because that’s what professional football fans are paying to park at the Los Angeles Coliseum (Los Angeles Raiders), Anaheim Stadium (Los Angeles Rams) and Candlestick Park (San Francisco 49ers).
The new fee will yield an extra $14,000 in parking revenue for every sold-out game at the stadium, McGrory said. A recommendation to establish a $4 uniform fee was rejected by the city manager’s office because it would mean the parking concession would lose money unless the game was sold out, he added.
The parking fee is also $5 at Mile High Stadium (Denver Broncos) and at Texas Stadium (Dallas Cowboys), which uses a sliding scale from $4 to $6, according to a city survey of parking fees.
The survey showed that lower parking rates are charged at the Kingdome (Seattle Seahawks) and Arrowhead Stadium (Kansas City Chiefs).
A representative from San Diego Transit Corp. told council members Monday that the higher parking fee may also encourage fans to ride buses to the game.
San Diego Transit and North County Transit charge $4 for a round trip on any of the 100 buses they send to football games from 15 locations in the city and county, according to a city manager’s report. The report estimated that 15% of the people who attend Chargers games ride the bus.