SAVANNAH, Ga. – Not paying to park on the weekends in Downtown Savannah will soon be a thing of the past. City leaders have been working on new parking plans for nearly two years and they’ve finally settled on the changes.

One of those changes is parking times. Right now parking is slated Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., but in the near future times will change to Monday through Saturday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

However, some city council members said they should extend the time to 10 p.m. and charge for parking on Sundays after 2 p.m.

“If the numbers are telling us that we’re really busy, we’re not seeing turnover on a particular day or time, then that tells us we need to do something in terms of either time or pricing,” Sean Brandon, the city parking and mobility services director, said.

This information is from the 2016 Parking Matters project study where more than 1,600 people were surveyed.

For the past few years, city leaders have worked to simplify parking zones and reduce restricted parking, but also get the most use out of those areas.

“We wanted to bring council up to speed with where we are with the parking plan implementation. This has been a multiyear process,” Brandon said.

One of the items in the plan is replacing 2,000 plus meters around the city over the next six months with electric meters.

A $2 million deal the city could sign off on in the next three weeks.

“There’s probably going to be a contract for the purchase of multi space meters,” Brandon said. “So, we’ve made a commitment that we are going to remove all of our single head meters.”

Which works well with the new Passport app the city hopes to use. This will allow you to monitor your meter time from your phone.

“It’s in beta testing right now, so unfortunately you can’t download it, but we’re hoping in the next 30 to 45 days we can have that out on the street,” Brandon said.

But none of these changes are expected to go into effect until 2018.

“There will need to be an ordinance change later in the year to end the parking ordinance to then establish the new rates,” Brandon said.

A resolution on parking matters will be presented to council at May 11th’s meeting along with the meter contract.

If you would like to see the full plan for the project and other details, including new parking rates, click here.