The days of driving into a park and ride and finding an open spot ended years ago. The lots are filled to capacity, and riders are fed up. The solution might be just as maddening: pay to park.

I spoke with park and ride users that get to their lots two hours before their normal bus, just to get a spot. They hit the gym when they get to their destination or schedule breakfast meetings once they arrive. The problem is obvious for Sound Transit and King County Metro.

Tell us what slows you down each day

“Drivers are frustrated because they can’t find a stall,” said Chris O’Claire, Metro manager of Strategy and Performance.

The agency is looking for any way it can manage its lots better to make them more efficient and more accessible.

“Where we’re really concerned is with those people who are shift workers that generally can’t and don’t need to get to the park and ride at 7 a.m., but they need a spot around noon,” O’Claire said. “A mom or dad that needs to drop their kids off at school. We want to make sure they can have access to the system throughout the day.”

Sound Transit is about to roll out a permit program where HOV park and ride users can pay $5 to get a guaranteed spot in their lots. It is considering a possible expansion to include solo drivers in the program, but that’s down the road.

O’Claire said it plans to roll out a free HOV permit program in a few of its lots next year. It will be a pilot program funded by grant money.

“If two or three people can come together and carpool to a park and ride lot, they could apply for a permit,” she said. “If they can validate that they’re a public transportation user, they can get a permit.”

Those permit-holders would be guaranteed a reserve stall at their favorite lot.

Metro is currently asking park and ride users to go online and fill out a survey to give planners a better idea of what they want from their park and rides.

“After we hear back from the survey, we’ll be able to build a permit program that’s free to the customers initially,” O’Claire said. “We need to test out strategies in order to move forward. We are not moving forward with a paid program initially.”

The survey period ends August 19.

Metro operates 25,000 parking stalls in about 130 lots around the region. It is looking at ways to share lots with businesses to acquire more spaces. I asked O’Claire about building more lots, and she said there just isn’t the money. It costs about $50,000 a stall to build a garage and she said many communities just don’t want one.