New Fee Would Increase the Cost of Parking in San Francisco

Parking in San Francisco can be frustrating.

In 2010, San Francisco alleviated the pain of hunting for quarters by replacing at least 7,000 coin-only meters with ones capable of taking credit or debit cards. And in February it extended the program. Now every city meter can take a credit card.

But that convenience has a cost -- merchant transaction fees. Until now, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has covered the cost of processing credit and debit cards with federal grant money, as part of the SFpark pilot. Now it's planning to pass that cost on to the people using the service.

At a meeting Tuesday, the agency's board will likely vote to add a 27-cent fee when drivers use a card to pay for a meter.

Paul Rose, SFMTA spokesman, says that if the agency had to pay those fees, it would have to draw $47.7 million from its operating budget over the next nine years.

"So what we're doing," says Rose, "is decreasing the transaction fee for pay-by-phone from 45 cents to 27 cents, and increasing transaction fees for credit cards up to 27 cents."

That way, it's even among those using the no-coin methods.

Rose says the SFMTA has gotten positive feedback about the ability to use credit cards to pay meters, and this is just the price of  that alternative.

"It's something that we have to do to ensure we can keep moving forward with this option," he said.