Pacific Beach wants to know what visitors and residents think about the community’s parking and traffic situation.
The Pacific Beach Parking Advisory Board is seeking public input through a survey, which can be taken at www.pbparking.org, or via hard copies at PB Library or Discover Pacific Beach and PB Town Council offices.
In a release from Discover PB, the community’s business improvement district, it’s stated the Parking Advisory Board “Recognizes and has established that parking imbalances occur in PB between business district, beach parking and residential areas, times of day, days of the week and seasons of the year. However, we would like to gather information on the general parking and traffic climate in Pacific Beach.”
The advisory board’s parking survey quizzes respondents on a variety of issues including: – What mode of transport they use to get to work and around the community; – Whether they have designated parking or park on, or off, the street;
– How difficult/easy it is to find parking; – Whether parking availability affects their choice of dining/shopping in the community; – If PB needs better parking management; – If PB needs more bicycle/pedestrian, or traffic-calming improvements; – Whether or not they would use the new Balboa Avenue Trolley Station in the future; – Their views on the need for free or low-cost shuttle service from the future trolley stop on Balboa Avenue to the beach; and whether better designated/separated bike lanes are desired around the community.
There are six community parking districts in the City of San Diego including the Pacific Beach Parking District. Each district is responsible for devising and implementing parking management solutions to meet the community’s specific needs and resolve undesirable parking impacts. 
Certain parking management-related revenues earned by the city within the boundaries of a parking district may be allocated to the district to implement and manage improvements to the community particularly that address parking impacts.
In March 2016, a riled crowd of mostly local residents gave an emphatic “no” to a limited metered-parking proposal being explored by Pacific Beach’s reconstituted parking advisory committee at a meeting at PB Rec Center. Citizens, including a large number of surfers, longtime residents and small-business owners, turned out to protest the re-introduction of metered parking as one possible fundraising alternative.
Assemblywoman Lori Saldana said metered parking constitutes “a regressive tax put on the backs of people.” A spokesman for PB Surf Club described the notion of putting in parking meters as “disingenuous” and “elitist,” referring to “pay to park” as “discriminating.”
Coastal photographer John Cocozza warned that putting in parking meters constituted a new tax on residents and employees in PB, which he said is an extra-added burden on those already struggling with the high cost of beach living. He suggested art walks and beachfests or restaurant walks might be better fundraising ideas than metered parking.
But not everyone at that meeting felt the possibility of using parking meters should be discarded outright.
“The status quo is not working,” said then-Pacific Beach Planning Group chair Brian Curry. “We don’t get anything (financial support) from the city. We have to take control of our own finances to clean up our community and manage traffic and parking.”
The Parking Advisory Board is comprised of representatives from the Pacific Beach Community Planning Committee, the Pacific Beach Town Council, Discover Pacific Beach and Beautiful PB. There are also four at-large residential/business representatives, one from each quadrant of PB, divided north-south at Garnet Avenue and east-west at Ingraham Street.