Beginning October 13, 2026, the cost of on-street parking in Tacoma’s downtown core will rise from $1 to $1.50 per hour, as the City implements the final stage of a comprehensive parking network update that began in 2025. The data-driven update applies to current meter zones and is designed to support a balanced and predictable parking network that pairs short visits with street parking spots and long visits with City-owned garages.
The update addresses a major finding of a downtown parking study done in 2024, where up to 31 percent of on-street stalls were tied up by the same vehicle for five hours or longer. The same study also showed that there were thousands of open stalls in City-owned garages and lots at peak time periods. On-street spots are now designed to be used for shorter visits, and garages for longer ones. To support parking balance at the curb, parking time limits remain in effect.
“As a downtown business owner, I see how important it is for people to get where they need to go as efficiently and conveniently as possible,” said Joseph Loran, co-chair of the Parking Technical Advisory Group. “The Parking Technical Advisory Group spent a lot of time with City staff looking at parking data and talking through what was and wasn’t working as well as it could. We kept coming back to the need for a better balance between people stopping for a short visit, typically clients, customers and visitors, and people who need to park all day, typically employees.”
Prior to making changes to on-street parking, the City implemented changes to the cost structure of its facilities to support all-day commuters and workers. At participating City-owned facilities, the daily maximum price was reduced from $16 to $12, hourly parking was reduced to $1 for the first four hours (and $3 per hour after), a Downtown Parking Savings Pass offering registered parkers a 20 percent discount on the daily maximum was introduced, and a Reduced-Rate Monthly Parking pilot program was launched. In addition, on-street parking switched to pay-by-plate with expanded mobile payment options and removed the requirement to leave paper tickets in car windows.
More information about the downtown parking system updates is available on the City’s website.
Current details on facility locations, hourly and daily rates, monthly parking, discounts, and reduced-rate programs are available at tacoma.gov/downtownparkingoptions.