Second parking survey launched for Pacific Beach residents

A second survey is being conducted by the Pacific Beach Planning Group to study the patterns and problems of residential parking in the community.

It can be found at pbplanning.org. It is only for those who live in Pacific Beach and open until Feb. 25, 2027.

Results from the planning group’s first survey was presented during the Pacific Beach Town Council’s May 20 meeting.

Because it had such a small response, only 220 participated, Lyssette Williams, vice chair of the planning group’s Streets and Sidewalks subcommittee that designed the survey, encouraged the approximately 35 council meeting attendees to participate in this second survey, as well as promote it to neighbors and friends in the community.

The goal is to obtain a sample size large enough to create a clear picture of residential parking accurate enough to guide planning group deliberations on future developments and their impact on parking.

“If they add 18 units where there was a one unit house before that, it’s hard to imagine what’s really going to be the true impact,” said PBTC President Charlie Nieto, who is also a planning group director. “Is it going to be a lot of young people that don’t need a car and they’re going to use public transit? Or is it going to be 18 people with a car? The purpose of this is to really try to paint an objective, empirical picture of what’s going on.”

The study aims to identify parking types, availability, infrastructure challenges and travel patterns of PB residents.

The latest poll comes after an initial parking survey, which ran from Oct. 3, 2025 to Feb. 25, 2026 failed to generate enough responses from residents to portray the parking situation reliably, with only 220 of Pacific Beach’s 44,634 residents answering the parking questionnaire.

“The findings (were) not statistically significant,” Williams said. “It’s 0.49% of the population. … To reach statistical significance, we need a little over 400 people to take this survey. It would be even better if we had at least 1,000 of PB’s 44,000 residents answering this survey from various parts of PB so we can better understand parking.”

Despite its shortcomings, the first survey offered a partial glimpse into the current situation. Of the 220 respondents, 49% of households have two vehicles and 16% have three or more.

With 34% of respondents renting and 30% owning single-family homes, the initial survey found that 197 vehicles were parked on the street instead of parking lots or garages and driveways.

In that regard, 31% said they parked half a block away from their home several times per week and 14% always or almost always do. Moreover, 30% of respondents replied that they “typically” park a block or more from their home.

“That first round, even though it was rough, was still really valuable; informing us where to go and where we should be able to end up (in the second survey),” Nieto said.

Because of the test run, the second survey expands the questions for more details. For example, while the first survey asked whether people used public transit, walked or biked, the second will also ask why they don’t.

Williams said people might not feel safe or that public transit doesn’t bring them close enough to their homes.

“We’re hoping to find some more answers, but we may end up having more questions,” Williams said.

Meeting attendees asked whether the new survey will address specifics, such as city transit priority areas which allow for developments with little or no parking.

“Will the survey capture businesses who have their employees parking in residential streets and neighborhoods?” asked Mary Soriano, La Jolla Town Council president.

Although the survey focuses exclusively on residential parking, Nieto said the new survey might indicate underlying issues in certain zones, since the survey doesn’t take actual addresses of respondents but organizes locations by U.S. census tracts.

“If we do see that the people living in those zones that are adjacent to Garnet Avenue or Grand Avenue, the business district; if those are the people that have all these parking issues, then we can take that data and see there is something really going on here, and maybe that will incite a future study,” Nieto said. “That’s probably the best case that you’d see that trend appear in business zones.”

In addition to being available online anytime through the PB Planning Group’s website, Williams said people will be encouraged to take the survey on tablets at town council events throughout the year, such as Concerts on the Green, before the second survey closes on Feb. 25, 2027.

Former Streets and Sidewalks subcommittee chair Eve Anderson led the push to make the first survey available at last year’s Beach Fest in October, netting almost 200 of the total 220 respondents. She said neighborhood location is central to determining the parking dynamic in PB.

“We could see that if they were in Crown Point, if they were in the central part of PB, they did seem to have more parking problems,” Anderson said. “North PB, you’re not going to see the same sort of parking problems that you will in apartment areas. Again, when we see the developments coming up in the planning group, will we vote for something that doesn’t have parking if it’s going to be X number of units?”

Calling it “uncharted territory,” Nieto said no planning boards or community organizations were conducting parking surveys in their San Diego neighborhoods to his knowledge.

“If it does confirm that there are a lot of people who are going to have trouble parking on their blocks, and these developments keep increasing and increasing, then it really does inform the planning group that we should maybe pursue policy in a new direction,” Nieto said. “What that would be, we really can’t determine yet. We don’t know what the data is going to say.”