Parking And Traffic Congestion (PACT)—Program Overview

The PACT Program is Carmel by the Sea’s multi-pronged, street-by-street effort to manage available public parking and reduce the resulting traffic congestion. The program consists of the following features:

Planning Focus—to involve the community and evolve any eventual implementations to the point they are well-understood, carefully developed, and more likely to succeed.

Goal-driven—the program’s stated goals will also serve as our “north star.” In short, there should be a direct connection between activities and achieving a goal.

Future-oriented—recognizing the program’s complexity, the PACT Program is specifically expected to adjust to future conditions. Additionally, there’s no possibility of anticipating every possible consequence of a major change so tweaks are expected.

Responsible stewardship—public parking spaces are a valuable city asset. Through paid parking, managing the use of the parking places should help minimize congestion in our most congested locations.

Respectful of residents and businesses—through a positive and transformative lens, overall improvements to the situation should ultimately mean things are better for the majority of residents and businesses.

PACT Program Goals

            1.         Reduce traffic congestion

            2.         Improve on-street parking available in the business district

            3.         Reduce the use of on-street parking by the area’s employees

            4.         Improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety

            5.         Favorably impact excessive traffic noise in the business district

            6.         Reduce local tailpipe emissions

            7.         Minimize tourist/employee parking “spillover” in neighborhoods

            8.         Entice locals to frequent local businesses

PACT Program History

During the publicly attended planning meeting in 2022 and again in 2023, the City Council prioritized the need to address traffic congestion through a paid parking program. The basis for making this a City priority is rooted in mounting community pressure to do something about congestion and a lengthy history of half-measure parking-related actions.

On October 4, 2022, the City Council received a report about traffic congestion and parking. During this meeting, the City Council expressed support for moving forward with a public engagement effort as part of the PACT Program. This report and video presentation can be found on the Resources page, HERE. 

On February 7, 2023, the City Council approved funding for the PACT Program’s public engagement and development of program details to occur through the summer of 2023. Further, barring unforeseeable interruptions, an “action item” before the City Council in September 2023 will result in an implementation decision.

Other historical information about parking can be located on the PACT Program web portal’s Resources page.