Pro-Am tourists navigate Carmel’s new parking meters

For many AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am visitors, Carmel’s parking meters were a new experience. City officials said the meters are designed to relieve congestion.

Karsham Patel and his wife had just finished figuring out the new parking meters, when they saw another couple looking confused.

“So at first the machine is easy but then you go through a process and then it tells you to press a key to insert a timing and do you display a ticket or you don’t display a ticket,” San Francisco resident Karsham Patel said.

On Ocean Avenue, six parking spaces were closed off, allowing shuttles to pick up people and transport them to events in Pebble Beach. Drivers said they were valuable spaces they wished they could have used. Parking was pretty hard to come by for many shoppers, unless you were an early bird.

“We came down early yesterday and early today. And there was an abundance of parking openings. So we just pulled up to one of the parking spaces on the side and put our credit card in,” tourist Ron Finkbohner said.

The six-month parking meter pilot program comes with mixed reviews from people in Carmel. City leaders said meters were installed to get employees who work on Ocean Avenue to park in the designated employee lots, keeping more parking along the street for customers.

Jasmine Medina works at Club Carmel and said she always parks in the employee lots.

“It’s been quite full lately. Like you’ll come around noon and there is no parking in there like at all. So I think it’s being used more now,” Medina said.

City leaders will hold a public meeting about the program this Thursday.