Sacramento airport parking rates going up for first time since 2017. Here’s how much
County officials on Tuesday approved a hike in parking prices at Sacramento International Airport, clearing the way for rates to increase each of the next five years.
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to authorize the county’s airports department to increase the maximum daily parking rate by up to 5% per year from 2023 through 2027, for the first parking rate increase at the airport in more than five years.
The current daily maximums at Sacramento International Airport are $29 for the hourly lot, $18 for garage parking, $12 for the daily lot and $10 for the economy lot. The county-operated airport last increased the garage parking rate by $1 an hour in May 2017; the other three rates have been in place since 2012.
Under the planned increases, the daily maximum would increase at the hourly lot from its current $29 to $30.50 next year, then rise by $1.75 per year through 2026, and by $2 from 2026 to 2027 to bring the new maximum to $37.75.
The garage maximum would go to $19 next year and as high as $23.50 by 2027; the daily lot from $12.75 in 2023 to $15.75 in 2027; and the economy lot from $10.50 to $13.50 in the same stretch.
The first round of increases could come as early as Jan. 1.
The rate increases serve to keep pace with inflation and to help fund several improvement projects, most of them related to parking and ground transportation at the airport, according to a county staff report accompanying Tuesday’s agenda item. The report also notes that parking rates at the airport are currently lower than comparable lots and garages in downtown Sacramento.
Recent construction projects and parking lot repavings have limited parking spaces at the airport, leaving availability “scarce” during periods of high demand, the report said.
Sacramento International Airport currently has about 18,000 paid parking spaces, according to Sheri Thompson, deputy director of operations and maintenance for the county Department of Airports.
Thompson said 2019 was the busiest year ever for air traffic at Sacramento International, and that volume has almost fully rebounded from the coronavirus pandemic that tanked flight demand in 2020 and 2021.
“We have switched now from recovery to growth,” Thompson said in Tuesday’s meeting. “We are concerned that we may come very close to running out of parking this calendar year, and because of that, we’ve constructed and developed temporary and contingency parking plans.”
Thompson said these temporary parking plans do not include revenue controls, making it increasingly urgent to expand permanent parking, which the increased rates would help to fund.
A group of planned improvements at the airport, which the county has labeled “SMForward,” include a new parking garage, a new pedestrian walkway at Terminal B, and rehabilitation and expansion of existing economy lots. Those projects, expected to cost more than $372 million, are projected to be completed by 2025.
The county report says parking makes up 54% of non-airline revenue at the airport, generating $65 million annually. The 5% increase would generate about another $47 million over the next five years.
In a separate item in Tuesday’s meeting, the board also unanimously authorized an $8 per-transaction-day fee to be collected from rental car companies at the airport, effectively tripling the amount currently collected by the county.
The county now takes in a $10 fee on each rental transaction by rental companies based at the airport. Switching to a per-day fee system would more than triple the fee per transaction: the average length of a car rental at the airport is about four days, according to the agenda report, so charging $8 per transaction day would increase the fee per transaction to about $32 from the current $10.
The revenues from the fee increase will go toward the construction of a $390 million consolidated rental car facility at the airport.
The rental fee change will also take effect at the beginning of 2023.
