Boca Raton to Offer Free Short-Term Parking in Downtown Pilot Program

Parking along the streets of downtown Boca Raton, Sept. 2024. (Photo: Boca Daily News)

Boca Raton officials gave the go-ahead this week for a pilot program that will offer free short-term parking in 26 spaces on one downtown street, with the goal of supporting businesses which have complained that aggressive parking enforcement has been a detriment to their bottom line.

The program will begin in the coming days to NE 1st Avenue, where at least one business owner has told city officials that a lack of short-term parking options has affected their sales. The need to “feed the meter” – at a kiosk or via app – and pay for parking has also drawn the ire of some residents who lament having to pay to park for just a few minutes of parking to conduct a transaction in a store.

“The most common complaint I hear about downtown is, ‘I just want to get a cup of coffee, I just want to get something from the store,'” said Councilman Marc Wigder in his role as a commissioner with the Community Redevelopment Agency, which manages the downtown parking program.

Stephen Timberlake, a special projects manager for the CRA, said his team developed a program where drivers can obtain 29 minutes of free parking on NE 1st Avenue between Palmetto Park Road and NE 2nd Street as part of a pilot program. The pilot will last for three months, after which time it will be evaluated based on numerous criteria, including revenue collection, the effect on enforcement and the response from adjacent business owners.

Under the pilot program, motorists will still have to visit a parking kiosk or reserve a space in the ParkMobile app on their smartphones. When a person approaches the kiosk and enters their space number, an option for 29 minutes of free parking will show up on the display, and can be selected. The kiosk will then print a receipt acknowledging the free time period. Drivers who use ParkMobile will still be charged 30 cents for their “free” parking period since the app developer collects the payment regardless of the price of a space – even if the price is zero.

Parking along the streets of downtown Boca Raton, Sept. 2024. (Photo: Boca Daily News)

Timberlake conceded that there is a possibility that the free parking period could be abused by a driver returning to a kiosk every 29 minutes to select another swath of time, however it is unlikely to be widespread in nature.

“If you miss it by 15 minutes and end up with a $35 ticket, it’s not going to make much sense to continue doing that,” he said. “You’re better off just paying the $4 for two hours in that scenario.”

Another potential hiccup could be increasing the number of spaces taken on NE 1st since the program will be in place there, but not on surrounding streets.

“Any time you change one particular street and not the whole area, it could drive additional space occupation in that one area,” Timberlake said, though the issue would likely be solved if the program were to become more common across the downtown sector.

The 26 spaces that will become part of the pilot program generated over $70,000 in revenue last year, however just $2,100 – about 3 percent – of that revenue came from about 2,750 short-term transactions of 15 or 30 minutes. The average time purchased on the avenue was 90 minutes.

City council members, acting in their capacity as CRA commissioners, unanimously agreed to embark on the pilot program.

“I appreciate the pilot program, I really do, and I think 1st Avenue is not the only place where they’re feeling it, so hopefully we can move to other areas if this pilot program is successful,” Wigder said.

Implementation was set to occur by the end of the week.

“We’ll get this live by the end of this week and signage, probably, within the next two weeks,” Timberlake said.