San Diego officials and frequent Balboa Park users are scrambling to prepare for a watershed moment in the park’s long history: Monday’s launch of a complex paid parking system with varying fees and discounts.
In a flurry of recent activity, the city has been installing payment kiosks, erecting informational signs, compiling the license plate numbers of park volunteers and establishing a website for frequent-user permits and city-resident discounts.
Officials have also finalized plans for expanded tram service from the one free lot that will remain — the 951-space lower Inspiration Point — and painted 150 of those spots orange for possible use by students at San Diego High.
Many park leaders continue to predict the new parking fees will notably suppress attendance at the park’s museums and other attractions, while also reducing membership in clubs focused on bridge, lawn bowling and other activities.
With the California Tower in the background, San Diego Lawn Bowling Club member Ralph Cook rolls a ball at Balboa Park in San Diego on Saturday, January 03, 2026. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Some are also complaining that parking discounts for city residents — which the City Council has said are a high priority — cost $5 for residency verification, come with two-day delays and are hard to figure out and cumbersome.
A few critics say the new fees, which are much higher for people living outside the city, could turn Balboa Park from a regional destination, long beloved as the city’s crown jewel, into something more like a neighborhood park.
The fees were first proposed to help San Diego avoid cuts to public services such as library hours — but city officials now say most of the new revenue from parking will help renovate older buildings in Balboa Park.
Several signs posted to notify park visitors that effective January 5th, 2026, “Paid Parking within Balboa Park Begins.” (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
While city officials tackle how to collect fees and some related issues, a group of park organizations called the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership is compiling the license plate numbers of all park workers, volunteers and contractors.
Those license plate numbers will be given to city parking enforcement officers by Monday so workers and volunteers can park for free in some of the park’s lots.
At least one of the new parking kiosks was vandalized shortly after being installed. A city spokesperson said Friday that paid parking will begin Monday even if multiple kiosks are damaged.
Meanwhile, clubs in the park are helping their lower-income members figure out if they can afford annual permits and trying to determine whether their groups will keep enough members to survive.
San Diego Lawn Bowling Club member Mark Keams writes down the scores of the singles game he’s competing in at Balboa Park in San Diego on Saturday, January 03, 2026. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Forty percent of the 360 members of the park’s Redwood Bridge Club live outside the city, and each of those members faces a $300 fee for an annual permit — instead of the $150 annual permits available to city residents.
But even those permits are far cheaper than what people without frequent-user permits will have to pay if they visit the park regularly.
To park in the most centrally located lots — Space Theater, Casa de Balboa, Alcazar, Organ Pavilion, Bea Evenson, Palisades and South Carousel — the non-resident fees are $16 per day or $10 for up to 4 hours. Residents pay half that.
In Level 2 lots a bit farther away — Pepper Grove, Federal, upper Inspiration Point and Marston Point — the fee is $10 per day for non-residents.
City officials stress that parking is free at the lower Inspiration Point lot, but critics note that it’s only free for three hours there — long enough to eat at a restaurant, but not long enough to compete in a bridge tournament.
Parking at lower Inspiration Point is $10 after three hours. The dividing line between upper and lower Inspiration Point is Presidents Way.
City residents essentially get half off all the new parking rates, but they can’t just drive into the park and expect immediately to pay a lower rate. They must pay $5 to verify their residency online, then wait as long as two business days for verification, and then pay for parking online.
Some critics also note that the parking kiosks in the park don’t alert drivers to the existence of a resident discount. City officials said Friday they are working with their parking vendor to have the kiosks start displaying the resident discount fees.
The bridge club has raised $10,000 in donations to help lower-income members pay for annual permits.
“If you want to play bridge at our club, we’re willing to help you,” said club president Mary Platter-Rieger.
Platter-Rieger is concerned that the city’s last-minute scrambling — the website for permits and residency verification didn’t go live until Friday — will lead to chaos and confusion on Monday.
“Some of us have severe doubts it will roll out smoothly at all,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the new website crashes.”
Patty Riddle, chair of the Balboa Park/Morley Field Recreation Council, has similar worries, but she thinks a bigger problem might be many that park users may be oblivious to the new parking fees.
Many badminton and table tennis players have no idea what they are facing Monday, she said.
“I think a lot of people don’t really realize this is happening,” Riddle said. “And if they are aware, they don’t know what to do.”
Even if things go relatively smoothly, Riddle said the new setup will worsen traffic congestion and pollution in the park by forcing people to search for spots in the free lot at lower Inspiration Point.
City officials have conceded they are unsure how quickly that free lot will fill up and force people to park in paid lots.
They’ve been criticized for not studying that, and for not conducting a market survey to determine what price points for parking would deter large numbers of people from visiting the park at all.
Other critics say the city is looking at the finances of the park’s clubs in too simplistic a way.
San Diego Lawn Bowling Club Treasurer, Kathleen Wageman, who is also in charge of the club’s membership, gathers up balls as she and other members play at Balboa Park in San Diego on Saturday, January 03, 2026. (Hayne Palmour IV / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The new parking fees could significantly damage the park’s San Diego Lawn Bowling Club — and not just because of membership loss.
Kathleen Wageman, a club leader, said only 47 of the club’s 122 members have committed to renewing their $500 annual memberships because many of them are facing an additional $300 annual fee for parking.
City officials say the parking fee helps cover city efforts to maintain the park and its buildings, but the lawn bowling club covers the maintenance costs for its greens and two years ago paid the full cost for new concrete backboards, Wageman said.
In addition, the club raises significant revenue by hosting corporate events that might no longer be possible with the new parking fees as a hurdle.
“I don’t like the idea of charging for parking in Balboa Park at all,” Wageman said. “It’s very disappointing.”
The new fees also spurred problems with San Diego High School, which occupies part of the park’s southern edge and had used spaces in the park for student parking.
City officials say they are optimistic they’ve solved things by using orange paint to mark 150 spots within the 951-spot free lower Inspiration Point lot.
Those spots will be free all day, not just for three hours, potentially allowing San Diego High students to park there the entire school day.
City officials say they can’t legally reserve the spots for students at the school, so those spots could get monopolized by non-students. But because school starts about 8 a.m. — before most other park users arrive — they expect students to occupy the bulk of them.
The new fees are also affecting some businesses along the park whose employees have relied on parking within the park and along its rim.
Now that parking is no longer free within the park and meters have been installed on bordering streets like Sixth Avenue, many of those businesses have had to find parking garages and other solutions to employee parking.
Employees of museums and other organizations in the park — and all volunteers and contractors — are allowed to park for free all day in Level 2 lots, at lower Inspiration Point or on Balboa Drive.
But they can only park for free when “they are actively serving in their respective role as a park-based employee, volunteer or contractor,” said Peter Comiskey, executive director of the park’s cultural partnership.
City officials had been expected to handle the task of verifying the park’s thousands of eligible workers and volunteers, but then recently asked the cultural partnership to step in.
Comiskey called the process “quite the complex undertaking” in an email to The San Diego Union-Tribune last week.
In addition to the annual permits, the city is offering quarterly parking passes — $60 for city residents and $120 for non-residents — as well as monthly passes at $30 for residents and $40 for non-residents.
Motorcycle and e-bike riders must pay the same parking fees as drivers of cars. Ordinary bicycles can be parked for free in bike racks.
Parking will be enforced from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week. Tram service from lower Inspiration Point to the center of the park will run during those same hours.
In addition, park employees and volunteers will be able to access on-demand trams from 7 to 9 a.m. and from 6 to 11 p.m.
Revenue from Balboa Park parking fees had initially been expected to be $12.5 million per year. But delayed implementation and a variety of discounts have reduced that to somewhere between $2.9 million and $4 million for the ongoing fiscal year, which ends June 30.
The San Diego Zoo announced in November that it would also start charging for parking Jan. 5, at the same rate as in the most convenient lots elsewhere in the park: $16 a day. City residents will get a 50% discount and pay $8 per day; employees, zoo members and volunteers will park for free.
City and zoo officials are still negotiating a parking revenue agreement and lease extension. City officials said this week they could not provide any new details on that.
On the kiosk vandalism, city spokesperson Nicole Darling said officials are still assessing the damage and what kind of repairs might be necessary.
“As long as there is still a functional way to pay, visitors should plan on paying for parking, or risk a citation,” she said.
She suggested visitors could use the Park Smarter App or pay by text.