{"id":397285,"date":"2026-09-11T21:42:53","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T21:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/397285\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T21:42:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T21:42:53","slug":"rising-parking-costs-force-beachgoers-to-rethink-coastal-visits-in-pinellas-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/397285\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising Parking Costs Force Beachgoers To Rethink Coastal Visits in Pinellas County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Parking fees at Florida beaches have climbed to $5 or $6 each hour this summer. Visitors now shorten their stays and hunt for less expensive options. Ten years ago, rates hovered around $1 to $1.50 per hour.<\/p>\n<p>Dawn Smith spent $10.55 for two hours at Treasure Island. &#8220;Woah \u2026 $10.55 for two hours? Yeah, it&#8217;s pretty expensive \u2026 but that&#8217;s what you have to pay nowadays, I guess,&#8221; Smith told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampabay28.com\/news\/region-pinellas\/florida-beach-visitors-frustrated-with-price-of-parking\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">TampaBay28<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Tim Armstrong believes the current pricing hurts families. &#8220;The current prices seem to be pretty high, and I understand there&#8217;s been inflation and so forth. But for families and kids, five or six dollars an hour seems kind of high,&#8221; Armstrong said.<\/p>\n<p>These increases have transformed beach planning. People must now map out how long they&#8217;ll stay and what they&#8217;ll spend on food before heading to the water.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Plan the day \u2014 how long you&#8217;re going to stay, how much you&#8217;re going to spend on parking and the cost of food,&#8221; said Smith to TampaBay28.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Padron has witnessed the steady climb. &#8220;I mean, it&#8217;s not great. I know everything else is getting expensive &#8230; you kind of roll with it. But yeah, it definitely used to be cheaper to park here. Over the years, we&#8217;ve seen it go up,&#8221; Padron said.<\/p>\n<p>Some have switched to beaches with flat daily rates. Andrea Guerrero now chooses Honeymoon Beach, where $7 covers the entire day instead of ticking up every sixty minutes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sometimes I will go to Honeymoon Beach, where you just pay seven bucks for the day. You can be there all day, parked for seven bucks, so it saves money,&#8221; Guerrero said.<\/p>\n<p>Smith pointed to broader financial pressures. &#8220;The economy, everything is so high. Yeah, definitely, you try to find the most cost-effective beach you can go to,&#8221; Smith said.<\/p>\n<p>Still, many continue making the trip. Guerrero accepts what she pays for her favorite spot. &#8220;When we come to St. Pete, we always come to this spot. So I&#8217;m okay paying for the day here,&#8221; Guerrero said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parking fees at Florida beaches have climbed to $5 or $6 each hour this summer. Visitors now shorten&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[6104,596,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-397285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-beaches","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}