Arlington County officials are considering extending parking meter hours, raising meter prices in commercial corridors and adding multispace meters.
Arlington has a standard short-term parking meter price of $1 per hour from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, regardless of location.
“We are looking if we want to make a recommendation for something different for that, but we’re still working that out,” county parking manager Sarah Stott said.
The Arlington Board passed a master transportation plan in November that includes the goal of adjusting parking meter prices to vary “by hour and location,” with “higher rates in the most dense commercial cores” — but specific rule changes won’t be discussed by the board until later this year.
Extending the meter hours past 6 p.m. along the county’s popular Ballston corridor — which includes the booming area of Clarendon — is also on the table.
“There has been conversation about that — some of the businesses are interested in us extending the meters until later hours,” Stott said. “We just haven’t decided if that’s appropriate yet.”
Arlington has long sought to balance between providing enough parking to encourage shopping and dining in the county but not so much that it discourages use of public transit.
The county last raised its meter rates in July 2007, when the price for short-term parking — or parking for less than four hours — climbed from 75 cents an hour to $1 an hour, matching the rate in the District.
Alexandria followed suit this year, with the city council voting to raise 50-cent and 75-cent rates to a uniform rate of $1 per hour throughout the city.
Arlington officials are looking to replace more standard parking meters with multispace ones that accept credit card payments.
The county will activate three new multispace meters for 88 of the parking spots in the large courthouse parking lot this week.
Arlington has six other multispace meters in the county. They were installed as part of a pilot program in 2006.
