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TIA may raise parking rates

The hikes would be at the terminal garages. Alternatively, remote lot rates may be lowered to encourage more use.

By JEAN HELLER
Published March 18, 2005

TAMPA - Officials at Tampa International Airport have asked nicely and gotten nowhere. So now they're thinking about raising some parking rates and lowering others to change driver habits.

There are two problems: getting vehicles away from the curbs outside baggage claim areas and getting more people to use the remote parking facilities, especially after a new garage is finished at the airport's south end.

"The object is not so much about raising revenue for the airport as balancing out the parking and cutting the dwell time at those curbs," Louis Miller, executive director of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority, told his board at a workshop Thursday.

The board is considering an increase in the short-term garage fee from $14 a day maximum to $18 and an increase in the long-term garage from $10 a day maximum to $14. In both cases, the rate of $1.25 for each 30 minutes would remain unchanged.

The remote parking, whether on a lot or in the garage, would be $7 a day, but possibly with the second and fifth day free, so that maximum weekly parking would be $35. Now, it is $7 a day with the seventh day free, for a maximum of $42.

The rate changes would not become effective until the first phase of the new garage is completed and open, which is scheduled for November, before the Thanksgiving rush. The changes will be discussed at a board meeting later this year.

But the crackdown on curbside waiting could begin sooner, Miller said, if the airport can open its new "cell phone lot" by summer. That lot would provide an hour of free parking for motorists waiting for calls from inbound passengers who are ready for their rides. The lot probably would be equipped with flight arrival information boards.

Miller is also considering offering the first hour free in the short-term and long-term garages as a way to lure people off the arrivals curbs where vehicles often clog up all the lanes back to the street. The average dwell time is 10 to 12 minutes.

"If we could cut that back to five minutes, the problem would absolutely go away," Miller said.

Giving away the first hour of parking would cost the airport $3.6-million a year.

"But it would be worth it if it gets people off the curbs," Miller said.

[Last modified March 18, 2005, 00:42:17]