The City is Converting Parking Downtown to Paid On-Street
- New paid parking meters in Downtown Salem July 10
- Free parking remains available for customers and visitors in downtown parking garages
- New pay stations will accept credit and debit cards in addition to coins for visitors only needing 10 to 20 minutes to grab a cup of coffee or run quick errands downtown
- Beep Beep Salem phone app available to pay for and renew parking time
Salem, Ore. – Starting July 10, visitors to downtown Salem will notice the addition of new parking stations, designed to make parking easier and create frequent availability of on-street parking spaces. In addition to paid on-street parking, the City will continue to provide free customer and visitor parking in the downtown parking structures.
“Metered parking supports more security and cleaning services for downtown Salem,” said Kristin Retherford, Community Planning and Development Director. “Moving from free on-street parking to paid parking can make it easier and more reliable to find parking in the area. Paid on-street parking makes more street spaces available for shoppers by shortening stays in on-street parking spaces, freeing up the space more frequently for new customers.”
The new pay stations accept credit and debit cards in addition to coins for visitors only needing 10 to 20 minutes to grab a cup of coffee or run quick errands downtown. The City is also offering a mobile payment option via a new payment app called Beep Beep Salem, available for download on the Google Play Store or Apple iOS. You can download the app and set up your user account for free. A $0.35 fee applies to each transaction using the app, in addition to the $1.50 hourly parking rate. There are no transaction fees for use of a credit card at the pay stations. The cost for parking at an on-street space downtown will be $1.50 an hour and parking will be enforced 8 a.m. – 8 p.m., Monday through Saturday. The pay stations are license-plate based, so users will not need to display a receipt…