ST. PETERSBURG — Downtown is hopping and shoppers and diners want more than two hours of parking to take it all in. Even with a smartphone app that allows patrons to add time on metered spaces, many say the fear of a ticket in short-term parking is cramping their ability to explore St. Petersburg's steadily growing downtown.

As downtown has become more active, the citywide number of parking tickets for expired meters or overtime limits on other street parking went up 31 percent from 2010 to 2014. The city issued 57,993 parking tickets last year, most of them in downtown.

"I pumped three quarters more than I was supposed to into the meter because I didn't realize you could only get two hours' of time," said Jessica Watts, who recently came in from Treasure Island with her baby to have lunch at Tryst with two friends. "I was shocked it was only two hours. I have a baby; you never know what can happen. That's not really long enough."

"I think it's ridiculous," said Miklos Bregger, a St. Petersburg resident who frequents restaurants and bars downtown. If you want to get a drink at the Canopy then have dinner at BellaBrava it's going to take more than two hours, he said. "You shouldn't have to get up in the middle of dinner and put money in the meter so you don't get a ticket."

Bregger doesn't use the Parkmobile app but said it's still an inconvenience to have to remember or listen for the text and reload the parking meter even remotely during the middle of dinner.

He thinks it would help if the two-hour limit ended earlier than the 10 p.m. end time now in force for many free spaces. "Why can't it just go until 8 p.m. so you can park there for a movie or dinner?" Bregger asked.

"I thought it was odd that there was only two hours to do all this," said Rob Horn of Sarasota, who was recently coming out of Kilwins with an ice cream cone. "Why do they want to limit your time to do all this?"

The "they" he alludes to is the city, which sets parking policies and employs the parking patrollers who place those dreaded mint green envelopes on windshields. The two-hour limit isn't designed to frustrate shoppers or crank up ticket revenues, said Evan Mory, St. Petersburg's transportation and parking management director. Parking limits are designed to keep cars moving so new cars can fill their spaces.

"It's a balancing act of a limited resource," he said. The creation of hundreds of new apartments and condos downtown also plays a small role in depleting street parking. Each resident can pay $15 a year for a residential parking permit as well as two guest permits that allow them to park on the street beyond the set limits. Of the 6,500 street parking spaces downtown, 1,500 can be used for residential parking. The more residents, the more those spaces are utilized.

But as St. Petersburg's downtown becomes more livable and lively, shoppers and residents are changing their lifestyles to not even include cars. Some of the people moving into the new homes are doing so because they can walk where they want to go and get rid of their cars, Mory said.

Still with the increased competition for street parking from residents and tourists, Mory hopes more people will use the city's parking garages and lots if they plan to be out and about for longer than two hours. All day at the Pier lot, for example, costs just $3.

Business owners say limits are needed.

"It does help keep the cars moving, allowing for more customers in my shop," said Marcus O'Brikis, owner of Agora, an art, furniture and gift shop on Beach Drive.

"My customers don't seem that bothered by it," said Raymond Ritola, who has owned Hooker Tea on Beach Drive for almost 10 years. "There are a lot of new tourists who come in and do get a ticket," he said. But the city's parking amnesty program allows first-time parking violators to get out of paying a fine if they provide receipts that show they spent $25 or more with local retailers, restaurants or museums when they got the ticket.

"The complaints that I hear the most are from business owners who get continually hammered with ticket after ticket," Ritola said.

That's the story for Derek Grasso and Scott Fisher, owners of T2Thes furniture design at 633 Central Ave.

"Each month Scott and I probably pay $200 to $400 in tickets as we have to let our other employees park in the only free spot we have behind us," Grasso said. They don't use longer term parking farther away because they are frequently in and out of the office carrying armfuls of samples.

He also says the two-hour limit inhibits shoppers who would like to wander longer on Central Avenue.

"They always have a mental clock counting down the time as they walk from place to place," Grasso said. "No shopper is going to go move their car after an hour and half or so, so they can keep shopping. They will more than likely just leave."

Contact Katherine Snow Smith at kssmith@tampabay.com. Follow @snowsmith.