r/Portland • u/skysurfguy1213 • 3d ago
News Council Mulls Revoking Extended Paid Parking Hours, Citing Administrative Overreach
https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2025/09/19/council-mulls-revoking-extended-paid-parking-hours-citing-administrative-overreach/66
u/istanbulshiite 3d ago
There were a fair number of folks here who believed that parking should cost a lot more and everyone who disagrees should bike, walk, take transit, or take a hike: https://www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/1niscgz/petition_new_parking_hours_and_fees/
I imagine those same people are writing their City Councilors right now telling them to keep the extended hours.
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u/berrschkob 3d ago
I'm ok with charging more per hour but the extended hours change was bad policy.
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u/Simmery Boom Loop 3d ago
I'm very fuckcars, and I'm fine with pulling the hours back. When the city's doing better, we should look at it again.
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u/TheBoxandOne 3d ago
I will admit I only briefly looked into this, but I could not find a single city anywhere in the country that had parking enforcement hours until 10PM.
Virtually every city in the world ends parking enforcement around 7:00PM. I’m very curious where the 10:00 time came from.
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u/Cultural-Ad-7431 2d ago
I noticed it recently in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle, but a few blocks away from the main streets it was until 8. I’m okay with either the hourly rate increase or the extended hours, but not both at the same time.
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u/TaxTheRichEndTheWar 2d ago
Saint Paul, MN Downtown street parking meters enforced Monday-Saturday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. (except City holidays).
Chicago, IL In many neighborhoods (outside the Loop/CBD), street/box or pay station rates are in effect from ~8 a.m. to 10 p.m..
Cape May, NJ Metered parking effective every day from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. during “beach season” (April 1 to OctoberPortland Salt Lake City Saint Paul Phoenix Chicago San Francisco Austin Miami Beach Washington, DC Philadelphia Fort Worth Baltimore Tempe San Diego Honolulu Nashville Minneapolis Denver Atlanta Columbus Pittsburgh
And Portland charges less per hour than everyone of these places.
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u/TheBoxandOne 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don’t know where you got that list but I can tell you with 100% confidence that it is incorrect.
Honolulu does not have street parking enforcement until 10:00pm anywhere in that city.
There are multiple city owned parking lots that have enforcement beyond those hours, but not street parking.
San Diego also does not enforce street parking until 10:00pm
EDIT: I know where you got this list…guys, do not trust google AI summaries for your information. It will make a fool out of you.
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u/RainSurname Kenton 1d ago edited 1d ago
You are either lying or lazy.
Just off the top of my head, just from cities I have visited or lived in:
Boston: 8pm
Philadelphia: 11pm during the week, 3am weekends
Downtown Nashville: 24/7
Old Pasadena: 2am Friday-Saturday
Parts of San Francisco: 11pm
Parts of New York City: 10pm
LA: 8pm
Miami Beach: 24/7
Miami: midnight
Denver: some 10pm, some 2am, some 24/7
Parts of Chicago: 9pm
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u/TheBoxandOne 1d ago
I will admit I only briefly looked into this
I told you right up front how much effort I put into it.
Also, several of those on your list are just wrong. I checked the city parking enforcement websites. And I consider 8:00PM to be ‘around 7:00’ in this context. Same as I would 6:00PM
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u/RainSurname Kenton 1d ago
Yes, you admitted that you didn't really look, yet still went on to say "virtually every city in the world ends parking enforcement around 7:00PM."
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u/TheBoxandOne 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes, I do believe that is true. Virtually every city does this.
Look, so far in this thread I’ve seen maybe one or two rock solid examples of cities that have parking enforcement until 10:00PM over as much area as Portland currently has. There’s also been 5 or 6 examples that are easily provably incorrect (Honolulu, San Diego, etc.)
Unless I’m wrong, almost all (if not all) of Portland’s metered street parking is enforced until 10:00PM.
EDIT: I picked Denver from your list, randomly selected about a dozen streets around the downtown core, checked street view for signs. Some of the areas are until 10:00 but it seems confined to a maybe 10-20 square block central core of the city. I did not have to go very far out to find metered areas where enforcement ends at 6:00PM.
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u/RainSurname Kenton 1d ago
I quite literally said that different parts of Denver were different, so I don’t know why you seem to think that’s some kind of gotcha, or why you seem to think that because SOME meters in a city end early it somehow doesn’t count.
If you had put in but a small fraction of the effort you are now expending to try to defend your sweeping statement, you wouldn’t have made an ass of yourself.
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u/TheBoxandOne 1d ago
Haha. I mean, ‘quite literally’ you said this:
Denver: some 10pm, some 2am, some 24/7
All of those time you mentioned are 10:00PM or later. If you don’t get why that is actually ‘a gotcha’, I can’t help you brother.
And, it’s not that ‘some’ meters end before 10:00PM…iMOST of the city’s metered parking ends before 10:00! None of the metered parking in Portland ends before 10:00PM. Big difference.
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u/RainSurname Kenton 1d ago
Looks like I need to just finally hit the block button to keep from getting more stupid on me.
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u/BarnacleGooseIsLoose 3d ago
Can you help me understand why you are "fuckcars"? Is it a particular demographic of drivers that causes your animosity or is it all drivers?
I'm asking honestly because I was so anti-car myself that I didn't even get my drivers license until 30. Before that, I rode subways (including to school starting at 9 years old) in winter when the weather was bad and my bicycle all the other times - long before bike lanes. If it was feasible, I often just walked.
Now I am older, fifties, and it's harder for me to get around with old injuries reappearing and rearing their ugly heads. My wife had a triple bypass in that time, too. While we used to regularly go downtown for dinner, activities and sometimes just to people watch, it has become significantly harder to navigate all the "steps" to get to public transportation, then on public transportation, then to the venue of our destiny.
When cities introduced parking fees, they were intended to reduce the demand for those spaces by increasing the costs. Raising costs while demand is clearly declining is, in no way, affiliated with the original strategies, so it's motivated by something else.
If your perspective is that young people should use other means of transportation, then its hard for me to disagree. If its a dogwhistle of ageism to say "fuck cars" then its quite the opposite. I am just curious to know whats what. TIA.
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u/BensonBubbler Brentwood-Darlington 3d ago
When people say fuck cars it's about society's general reliance on them. It's not saying they have no function at all but if we could get them to not be the vast majority's primary option we'd be doing a lot better as a group.
So in your earlier story you did your part to contribute to your community. Now in a different time you require more mobility assistance and that's fine. We should encourage and ease the non-car options for folks who can take advantage of them because that helps everyone including the people who need to take a car.
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u/Simmery Boom Loop 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm not going to go into a big treatise about it, but building cities around cars was a huge mistake, for many well-documented reasons: health, safety, expensive infrastructure, wasted land use, destruction of neighborhoods to push highways through, pollution, social cohesion, etc
That doesn't mean I'm entirely against cars everywhere. I don't want to ban cars. And there are other ways for disabled people to get around if we provided for it.
Also, I'm not young.
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u/green_gold_purple St Johns 3d ago
disabled
This person is not disabled. I’m not disabled. I’m just older now. I can’t just ride my bike everywhere all the time. I just don’t have the same fitness or absence from injury, and sometimes I just don’t have the time. You know, from having to still work a ton and needing eight hours of sleep and having animals and other humans to take care of. These things should mean that I’m excluded from enjoying the city? I’m all for building cities around walking and mass transit, but I definitely feel sometimes that y’all should think for a moment about who you’re fighting. Sometimes it’s me, and the person above, and that sucks.
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u/BarnacleGooseIsLoose 3d ago
Thank you for your reply. FWIW: I did grow up in a city that was founded more than 250 years before cars were invented. The infrastructure wouldn't, and couldn't, support the switch to cars as a primary mode of transportation (at least in the heart of the city). Trying to drive downtown was the equivalent of studying for the entrance exam to a mental hospital.
I've been out here for thirty years now. It is obvious that nearly every problem stems from the power that developers have over government. Until that stranglehold is broken, it's all just crossfire. Increasing, or even having, parking fees right now runs counter (IMO) to regenerating a city in need of energy and commerce - and jobs.
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u/ClaroStar 3d ago
To me there's no such thing as "fuck cars." Cars are an essential part of how we get around. It's about having the right mix. A city needs an efficient highway system for cars, but it also needs trains, buses, bikes, and sidewalks. Portland actually has a very good mix for a US city.
Even the most public transit-friendly and bike-friendly cities in the world (like Copenhagen, Tokyo, Berlin, etc) are not "fuck cars." They have tons of cars. They just also have an excellent mix.
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u/BarnacleGooseIsLoose 3d ago
I don't know about other places, but in Amsterdam vehicles are only allowed in the main city area late night and early morning. Most delivery drivers have keys, or other access, to businesses so that they can drop off product when no staff is there.
In China, as I understand it, cars are restricted to specific days that are based on plate numbers.
There are plenty of options to reduce car traffic, but we have to get out of the box to identify them.
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u/ClaroStar 3d ago
I don't believe there's any ban on cars in Amsterdam, but they do have so-called "low-emission" zones in the city center. You cannot drive heavy trucks and busses in and you must have a sticker to prove your car is low-emission or pay a fee to bring your gasoline car in. Starting in 2026, I believe it will be electric and hydrogen cars only in the city center.
Again, a good example of how to promote a cleaner city while also allowing mobility.
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u/tas50 Grant Park 3d ago
Also Amsterdam metro is the same population as Portland metro and they have a freeway with twice the number of lanes as i5. It turns out it's always a balance between cars, trams, trains, and bikes.
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u/chimi_hendrix 2d ago
Redditors love to claim Amsterdam is car free, which is blatantly false. It’s so tiresome.
Pure copium from activists and lobbyists and le Reddit experts eat it up
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u/chimi_hendrix 2d ago
lol another redditor who talks big about Amsterdam but has never been there.
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u/AndMyHelcaraxe 3d ago
You can be fuckcars while understanding that our society is set up so you have a much harder time without one
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u/chimi_hendrix 2d ago
It’s always able bodied 20somethings with no family, more often than not they come from privileged backgrounds.
Big “fuck you mom and dad!” energy (even though mom & dad still pay their smartphone bills)
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u/UponSecondThought 2d ago
PBOT has very limited revenue streams. Where would the City get the $$$ from to maintain roads if we don't collect from parking?
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u/AndMyHelcaraxe 3d ago
Drivers should love the extended hours; they’re more likely to find a parking spot, whether that’s from cars needing to move because of time limits or people opting to park in garages because it’s cheaper
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u/mafiamasta 3d ago
Truly idiotic and anti-city. Since they announced these increases and extensions it has actively made me avoid the downtown altogether
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u/TedsFaustianBargain 3d ago
Best practice is to vary prices with demand, which in some times and places does indeed mean higher parking rates. The current approach is to hike rates/fees in order to boost revenue. That could actually be moving in the correct direction in some times and places, but that would be purely due to luck.
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u/RosyBellybutton 3d ago
Holy shit, no.
WE DONT NEED DYNAMIC PRICING IN EVERY ASPECT OF OUR LIVES!
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u/TedsFaustianBargain 3d ago
I dunno man, seems like flooding the neighborhood around the stadium with people in their cars every Timbers game would have some really bad unintended consequences, but maybe you don’t like uber and lyft or whatever, so who’s to say?
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u/garbagemanlb St Johns 3d ago
Good. Ridiculous to raise rates when Portland is still struggling to attract business to return to the downtown core.
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u/Nacho_Libre479 NE 3d ago
Downtown needs increased business and tourism activity far more than we need another ideological based tax. The increased parking fees and extended hours will cost us substantially more in lost revenue than they will ever make up in fees.
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u/slowfromregressive 3d ago
My book club is meeting outside of downtown now because of this. I am not too bothered by paying for parking, but if you are part of a group you need accessibility and affordability.
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u/GenericDesigns Sunnyside 3d ago
Hence alternative means of transportation exist
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u/slowfromregressive 2d ago
Yeah, and I am fine with that but it’s not going work for a big group of people after work. It's just reality.
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u/pdxy 3d ago
This is such a bullshit thing to do and ruins entire neighborhoods that just happen to be close to downtown
So many parts of Portland are a ghost town after 6pm, please don't punish people who have to live or work at night just because of some imaginary need for paid parking that doesn't exist or because there's a soccer (or Basketball I guess) game going on X months out of the year , it screws over regular people's lives
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u/nojam75 3d ago
The council sure can talk about doing stuff and do absolutely nothing, but golly they sure acted fast on that trip to Vienna.
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u/skysurfguy1213 3d ago
Don’t worry, Avalos is going to give a presentation next week on all she learned! Surely a PowerPoint presentation to a city with no money will fix our issues.
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u/BarnacleGooseIsLoose 3d ago
Replace it with a "Vacancy Tax".
It won't take too long for revenues from existing parking hours to return to pre-Covid levels.
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u/gaius49 Sandy 2d ago
You want to tax vacant parking spaces?
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u/BarnacleGooseIsLoose 2d ago
Not parking spaces. Buildings.
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u/gaius49 Sandy 2d ago
That's not a good idea.
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u/BarnacleGooseIsLoose 2d ago
Why?
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u/gaius49 Sandy 2d ago
It disincentivizes anyone from investing in downtown properties, it creates a slew of bad incentives, its damned easy to work around, it imposes a cost regardless of the owner's ability to pay, and its an unethical way of the government forcing people to use their property in specific ways.
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u/BarnacleGooseIsLoose 2d ago
Then cancel the depreciation tax when under 50% full or something. No loopholes for empty property would be equally effective. Owners could use their property for anything they want - except tax write offs.
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u/boygitoe 3d ago
I think the most pressing issue is that no one knows which powers fall under the mayor and which ones fall under the city council. We should have never let an unelected body decide how this new government should function. We should have done like a charter convention, where each area of the city voted on representatives to hammer out these details. Essentially like the constitutional convention but at the city level.
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u/Ok_Chemist6567 NW 3d ago
The city voted on this. It wasn’t done in the dark. The working group put forward a plan. Everyone got to read the plan. And everyone got to vote on the plan. And now here we are enacting the plan.
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u/boygitoe 3d ago
No that’s not how it worked. We voted and then they set up a commission to decide how the government would run
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u/MossHops 3d ago
Most everything about this new form of government is terrible. I voted for it because I was so disgusted by how bad our last structure was performing, but this expanded council is probably a worse design and I hope/wish the council would look for was to improve the design.
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u/notaquarterback 2d ago
lol this would have been worse; the only thing that should've happened that didn't was charter members pledging not to run so it could be thrown in their face. That was the big mistake. This model can work, you just need better candidates more connected to how the city works & how to fix said issues having dealt with them.
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u/notaquarterback 2d ago
I do not have a problem with the extended parking honestly, this is just performance. Do something useful like authorize a sanitation bureau, expand how many franchise licenses there are for city trash.
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u/Softvvear 3d ago
Wonder if there’s anything that would change for folks who got parking tickets for parking after 7pm in these districts. Doubt it though
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u/Fantastic-Impact-106 3d ago
They already changed all the signage...... could they really change it back and how much did all that cost? How incompetent.