A Quarter of California Beach Access Points Charge a Fee. Is That a Tax on the Ocean or the Fairest Deal on the Coast?

Parking and entry charges at the shoreline divide those who see a free birthright from those who think users should pay for what they use

Beach Access Fees in California: The Economics of Paying to Park by the Sea

The California coast is public. Getting your car near it frequently is not free. For surfers, who arrive with boards and wetsuits and tend to visit often, parking charges are the most regular point of contact with the state.

An inventory compiled for a national coastal advocacy group gives a sense of the landscape. Of the beach access sites it catalogued in the state, 24 percent charged fees, 87 percent had parking, 55 percent had restrooms, 41 percent had a staircase to the beach and 26 percent were street-end access points. The same report describes the Coastal Commission’s launch of a public website and app listing access points in 2015.

So roughly three in four access points are free at the point of use, and one in four is not. Whether that is too many or too few depends on what one thinks a fee is for.

The Case Against Fees

The argument for free access is rooted in the state’s constitution and the Coastal Act, which declare that the public has a right to reach the shore. Charges, on this view, convert a right into a purchase. They fall hardest on low-income families who live inland and must drive. A twenty-dollar day rate is trivial for some households and prohibitive for others.

The Coastal Commission has at times resisted fee increases by state and local park agencies on these grounds, treating a rise in price as a reduction in access that requires its approval.

The Case for Fees

The libertarian and economic case runs the other way. A car park, a restroom, a lifeguard tower and a staircase down a bluff all cost money to build and maintain. Someone pays. If not the user, then the general taxpayer, including people who never go to the beach.

A user fee aligns cost with benefit. Those who use the facility fund it. It also does something a tax cannot. It rations a scarce resource. On a summer Saturday, the spaces at a popular break are worth more than at dawn on a weekday in February. A price that reflects that will turn spaces over, reduce cruising for parking and tell the operator where more capacity is needed.

Free Is Not Free

Where parking is free, it is allocated by arrival time. The spaces go to whoever gets there first and stays longest. Surfers know this system well. It rewards those with flexible schedules and penalises a worker who can only come after a shift. That is a distribution too, with winners and losers. It is simply less visible than a price.

Free lots also tend to be under-maintained, since there is no revenue tied to their condition, and politically vulnerable, since a facility that earns nothing is easy to close.

Where the Money Goes

The strongest objection to fees is not to the principle but to the practice. A user fee is defensible when the revenue stays with the facility. It is much less so when it disappears into a general fund and the restroom remains locked. Beachgoers who pay fifteen dollars and find a broken shower are entitled to feel that they have been taxed, not served.

Transparency would answer much of the criticism. Each fee lot could post what it collected last year and what was spent on site.

The Equity Problem, Taken Seriously

The concern about low-income visitors is real and should not be waved away. There are ways to address it that do not require abandoning prices: discounted annual passes for low-income residents, free days, free street-end access maintained alongside paid lots, and transit to the beach. Several of these already exist in some form. A summary of the state’s long access battles notes that the fights have mostly been between wealthy landowners and the commission over closed roads and missing stairways, not over parking meters. The largest barriers to access have been gates, not fees.

Private Provision

It is worth recalling that before one famous dispute began, a private landowner near Half Moon Bay admitted the public to a beach for a small parking charge for decades. That was a market solution, and by most accounts it worked. The public got access. The owner got revenue to maintain the road. The arrangement ended when a new owner declined to continue it. A fee was not the problem. The absence of a secure right was.

What Surfers Might Want

Surfers are in an unusual position. They are frequent users, often at off-peak hours, and they care more about the wave than the amenities. A pricing system that charged by time of day, offered an affordable annual pass and kept the money at the beach would probably serve them better than either universal free parking, with its dawn scramble, or a flat high fee.

The reflexive demand that the coast be free is understandable. The better demand is that whatever is charged be modest, visible and spent where it is collected.

The General Principle

Public goods debates often assume two options: free and funded by taxes, or private and exclusive. There is a third: public and priced. Roads with tolls, parks with entry fees and beaches with paid lots all fall in it. Done badly, it is a stealth tax. Done well, it is the most accountable way to fund a shared resource, because the people paying can see what they get.

A Lighter Note

The British seaside car park, with its ticket machine and its warden, is a national institution. The London Prat has fun with it in its London satirical news on parking charges and English satirical news about seaside car parks. Bohiney Magazine does the same for American meters.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/