Paid Parking Generates More Than $2 Million For Salem In Its First Year - 10/13/26
Salem Converted to On-Street Paid Parking in July 2025
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Paid parking meters were installed in downtown Salem in July 2025
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Revenue collected during 2026 was $2,431,190.85 (approximately $1.03 million above initial estimate)
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Paid parking revenue is budgeted for Downtown Community Police pilot program and downtown security, beautification and garbage services, parking equipment costs and parkade maintenance
Salem, Ore. – Salem introduced paid on-street parking on July 10, 2025. In its first year, the program generated approximately $2,431,200 in revenue from nearly one million transactions between parking meters and the Beep Beep Salem mobile payment application.
“The program has made it easier to find on-street parking spaces, encouraged longer-term visitors and downtown employees to use the City's parking structures and established a more sustainable revenue source for future investments in downtown parking structures and other downtown-related services,” said Dana DeKlyen, assistant director of Urban Development.
Parking Meters and Beep Beep Salem App Use
In the first year, 148 parking meters generated about 706,000 transactions and the Beep Beep Salem mobile payment application recorded approximately 232,000 transactions.
In September 2026, Salem announced a new Beep Beep Salem parking application that offers improved customer service and faster processing times. All users have until December 31, 2026 to transition to the new version.
Use of Parking Revenue
Revenue generated by Salem’s new paid parking system will fund the Downtown Community Police pilot program and downtown security, beautification and garbage services, parkade maintenance and parking equipment costs. The revenue has also eliminated the Downtown Parking Tax for businesses.
On-Street Parking and Parkade Permit Activity
With the launch of paid on-street parking, Salem’s downtown parkades (Liberty, Marion and Chemeketa) saw a 27% increase in permit activity compared to the prior year. The increased use of the parkades is consistent with one of the objectives of paid on-street parking: keeping on-street spaces for shorter-term customer and visitor parking by encouraging longer-term users, including downtown employees, to use off-street parking.
Use and Customer Feedback
The launch of paid parking also improved on-street parking space availability, with customers finding spaces closer to their destinations and spending less time searching for parking. Feedback from downtown businesses and visitors regarding improved parking availability and turnover has been positive.
Background
Following City Council direction and community engagement regarding the future of downtown parking, the City implemented paid on-street parking on July 10, 2025.
In January of 2026 the City moved forward to eliminating the Downtown Parking Tax.
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