Seasonal meters: why some towns turn the little machines off half the year.

Sure, there’s a big canvas tarpaulin-like thing covering the kiosk here on the sidewalk, so it may not be entirely clear what’s underneath.  But an assessment of the surrounding area should make it obvious: it’s a parking meter, and this town uses seasonal meters.  And it’s late September.

The town in question is Rehoboth Beach, Delaware—a place I’ve featured several times in the past.  And while it’s a well-known destination within the Mid-Atlantic states, it only achieved a high profile in the last few years as the weekend getaway for the current Commander in Chief.  The Delaware coast is, naturally, much smaller than the expansive Florida coast or even the Jersey shore a bit to the north; the entire state of Delaware is just under 2,000 square miles.  Nonetheless, the highway (Delaware State Route 1) leading in to Rehoboth Beach (pop. 1,100) from Dover offers six lanes to accommodate huge vehicular traffic and the numerous businesses depending on that traffic for sustainment.  Like most resort towns, Rehoboth Beach swells in population to the summer months to tens of thousands, with many more (probably over a hundred thousand) in the expansive housing developments surrounding the tiny municipality of barely one square mile.  Rehoboth Beach has the buzz—and, dare I say, the suburban sprawl—of a much, much larger city, which it is, given the visitors who perch their big umbrellas in the sand for a week or two in the summer.  (As well as the retirees who stick around a bit longer.)

Therefore, it’s entirely predictable that, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, Rehoboth Beach is jam packed, catering especially to vacationers from metro Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC, all of whom can easily reach the destination after a few hours in the car.  And it is a car-based destination; the closest international airports are Philadelphia (PHL) and Baltimore/Washington International (BWI), both about two hours away when traffic isn’t crazy. With so many people cramming into such a tiny city to enjoy its beaches, its boardwalk, and the abundant tax-free shopping among the retailers, it should come as no surprise that Rehoboth Beach has an elaborate and rigorously enforced parking strategy, including those seasonal meters.

Virtually all the parking along Rehoboth Avenue, the busiest commercial corridor pointing right to the beach, uses the metering system courtesy of the ubiquitous smart-phone app ParkMobile.  These spaces require payment from 10 am to 10 pm. 

These on-street spaces fill up early because they are convenient.  By city-slicker standards, the prices aren’t too bad (currently $4 an hour), but they require constant monitoring and maintenance, since they usually max out after two hours.  While visitors can recharge them remotely from the ParkMobile app on their phones, they must remain diligent, because the meter police in Rehoboth Beach are understandably aggressive to those who let the meters expire.  The metered spaces are ideal for visitors who get there early (before the traffic on DE-1 gets too crazy) and who only intend to stay a few hours, or who aren’t worried about losing track of time while enjoying the waves.

And at least a few of the “rockstar parking” spaces closest to beach don’t allow more than a quick trip.  They are metered and max out at just 30 minutes, without the ParkMobile option of recharging. 

The rest of Rehoboth Beach uses a pre-paid permit system.  Outside of Rehoboth Beach’s oversized downtown core, the parallel streets to the north and south of Rehoboth Avenue are primarily single-family detached residential: verdant and charming, but not offering an abundance of parking lots (which helps keep it verdant and charming, of course).  They look a lot like this, and parking on these spaces requires a permit displayed in the windshield.  Visitors can purchase these in person, not online, using the City Parking Department offices (an oddity for a town this small), or at a couple scattered kiosks.  At the time of this article, they charge $25 per day and operate from 10:00am to 5:00pm daily; weekly and seasonal are also available.  With these permits, a visitor can park just about anywhere else without a meter, and it’s unequivocally a better deal than those seasonal meters, for anyone staying more than six hours.

A visitors’ guide maps the breakdown between metered and permitted spaces.  The City essentially enforces on-street parking across 100% of its land area.  It is virtually impossible to park freely in the municipal boundaries, unless a visitor is staying at one of the private homes or hotels.

Those who don’t want their cars watched like a hawk, or who don’t care to deal with the hassle of parking in a crowded beach town—have other options, including the following:

• Park and Ride in neighboring towns like Lewes or the expansive outskirts of Rehoboth Beach (outside the city limits)
• In conjunction with Park and Ride, the statewide DART bus service, with numerous summer and year-round routes
• Jolley Trolley: a family-owned company that offers summer fixed-route shuttles linking the surrounding hotels with Rehoboth and its rowdy southern neighbor, Dewey Beach
• Bike rentals: Rehoboth Beach is generally bike friendly (though, unlike neighboring Lewes, not yet certified as such).  Renting a bike from a distant hotel can avoid the parking.
• Charter tour vans through companies like Delmarva Discovery 

All of these considerations are only relevant from May 15th to September 15th.  After that, the party winds down, and Rehoboth looks much like it did during my visit in late September:

The seasonal meters get covered up and parking is basically free everywhere.  These images reinforce the thesis to this article, and it isn’t a profound one.  The meters of a beach town get calibrated to its demand.  Although Rehoboth Beach gets enveloped in a blanket of wilting humidity during its summer months, it remains a fundamentally northern beach: the ocean is chilly compared to Florida or even the Carolinas.  And while the weather is usually still warm and comfortable in late September, it isn’t predictably sunny; it must tolerate a lot of secondhand hurricane conditions.

Having visited Rehoboth Beach only one other time outside its peak season, the city still seemed pretty bustling; even a combination of bad weather and a recent medical waste scare repelled people from the beach and the boardwalk.

In defiance of the photo above, Rehoboth Beach still suffered from frustrating traffic on State Route 1, many of the restaurants were still operating at summer hours, and most of the on-street parking along Rehoboth Avenue was full.  But there’s not the crazy demand for parking that the city enjoys during the peak beach months.  The city’s leadership, with no small amount of assistance from the hall-monitoring of the Parking Department, have worked overtime to determine that seasonal meters are the solution.

Meanwhile, businesses throughout the main drag of Rehoboth Avenue were preparing for the slowdown by announcing their forthcoming reduced hours. It’s obvious. Music festivals and long-distance races continue throughout the rest of the year, but a draconian parking enforcement scheme may not work so well in October or January or March.  And any metering at all could scare away visitors to the town, who could easily go to the numerous shops and restaurants of Coastal Highway (DE-1), which have abundant off-street parking at no charge.  So parking is free in Rehoboth Beach for eight months of the year.  Seasonal metering is the solution for weighing the spikes and troughs in demand for visiting the city, assessed by the means most people use to get there: four wheels and a motor—the American way.