BETHESDA, Md. — Residents will have to start paying a premium for that sweet parking space right next to their downtown Bethesda destination this month.
Prices at three garages — Metropolitan, Bethesda-Elmo and Cordell-St. Elmo — are going up to $1 an hour starting this week. But prices at the less-crowded, underused lots such as Auburn-Del Ray will remain at 80 cents an hour.
The county has a map of the garages with increased rates, and those without rate changes, on its website.
Montgomery County Department of Transportation spokeswoman Esther Bowring says the change is part of an effort to ease crowding at the most popular parking garages and to fill the spaces that sit empty at parking garages that don’t see as much use.
The charts from the Montgomery County Department of Transportation show the difference between high-demand and underused garages. According to the Division of Parking Management, each of the most-used garages are less than 750 feet away from an underused one.
Bowring says the move is part of an ongoing effort to introduce demand-based parking downtown: Encouraging higher turnover at on-street parking spaces — which now go for $2 an hour — and stopping the snarled traffic that spills out onto downtown streets at the entrances of the most popular garages.
The price change is expected to add an extra $600,000 to the county parking lot fund.
Shoppers have been enjoying the free parking in county lots on Saturdays, but that’s going to be a perk of the past: Starting next year, the county will charge for parking on Saturdays. That’s expected to generate an additional $1.3 million.
