I'm going to be driving back to S.F. from Carmel on a Wednesday evening after the rental car location closes for the evening so I have to hold on to the car overnight and return it in the morning. We are staying at the Palace in the downtown area. What would our cheapest parking option be for the night?

The Palace is right next to a BART Station so I would park near a bart station somewhere if that would lead to cheaper parking but I'm not going across the Bay to do this. It would have to be somewhere in the city or along the way south of the city.

Any thoughts?

KathyWdrf has been a source of info on the city owned parking lots around Union Square. Try a PM to her and she can probably help you, as I don't pretend to know a thing about parking downtown.

The other options would be the ParkSFO structure, just off the North Access Road up past the big United hangar, which charges $11 a day (24 hour period, not calendar day) for outdoor parking.

BART parking might also work, and it looks like they do not require validation of parking in Miibrae, though you are limited to 24 hours weekdays. Might PM Magic111 who has parked there before..he might know, or just call BART and ask them. BART does have a parking information page HERE.

Millbrae is just across 101 from the airport, and is 1 stop on BART from SFO. I've seen it posted here before that the train fare is about $1.50 one way from SFO.

Thanks for the compliment, Tom, but I'm not always the authority on parking and transit!

It seems like one possibility would be to park at the Millbrae BART station. According to the BART website at www.bart.gov, the one-way BART fare from Millbrae to Powell St. is $3.55. And I'm not sure what the parking charge would be, if anything.

But it seems by the time you paid for a roundtrip on BART for two (or more?) people, it might be better (cheaper and far more convenient) to just park overnight at the Sutter-Stockton garage, or one of the other city garages downtown.

According to the following website, the charge for parking at Sutter-Stockton between 6 PM and 7 AM would be only $7.00:

Department of Parking and Traffic: Parking Information

....but note the additional charges that would mount up if the car is left there beyond 7 AM. (Parking till 10 AM would add $7.00 more to the charge, for example, if I'm interpreting their chart correctly.)

The Union Square garage would apparently charge $30.00 for overnight parking. Check the other downtown city-owned garages on the above website to see if there's a better deal than at Sutter-Stockton.

If you coming in evening(weekday) and will be out of there by morning(say 9am) to return the car, park for free.

Go down to market street anywhere between gough and castro (around the big Safeway and look for street parking). Wednesday nights, there is always something around there opening up. Park on market street or off a block(make sure you not violating street cleaner rules for that side of street) and then take the light rail back to the palace.(runs along market)

I guess parking will cost you the $1 fare up/down market or $2 if you take Mrs Spike with you on the light rail instead of picking her up at the palace.

Thanks for the tips everybody. Depending on Mrs. Spike's mood, we'll either look for parking around Market & Castro or park in the Moscone Center Garage which should run us $21 but is within walking distance of the hotel so I won't have to take public transit to the car then drop the car off then take public transit to my next location (hotel or somewhere else).

....But I think the Sutter-Stockton garage would be cheaper than Moscone Center (and it's also within walking distance of the hotel)....

The Sutter-Stockton garage according to your earlier parking link runs $33 for up to 24 hours while the Moscone lot is $21 for up to 24 hours. Plus, the Moscone garage is between the hotel and the drop off location (avis at 821 howard). So if I get to the car at 9:30am or so (for a 10am drop off), I don't have to worry about hitting a ton of traffic in downtown while driving back to the rental location to drop the car off and arriving late which would incur an additional fee. I'm going on vacation so I don't need the stress that might produce.

If you park at Sutter-Stockton only until 9 or 10 in the morning, you're looking at about $14 to park, I believe. And you were the one looking for cheap parking. @:-) But, suit yourself!

And by the way, why is the downtown car dropoff mandatory, instead of an airport dropoff? Special discount or something?

Your right about Sutter-Stockton. My mistake in doing the math. It's a bit confusing the way the days and hours are broken out. Thanks.

I'm dropping the car off downtown because I'm not leaving town after dumping the rental and I'm staying downtown. I have a few days in S.F. where I didn't think I'd need the rental. Also, from reading flyertalk, I was under the impression that renting at at a downtown location is cheaper than renting at the airport.

If you're game for Market/Castro, you can park across my store driveway on Divisadero(between Oak and Page). It would probably mean a muni change, but my Van's in the shop and the space is empty with no street sweeping on Thursday mornings.

Send me a PM if you need it.

OK, now I understand. Somehow I got confused about your plans.

Makes sense to get rid of the car and just spend a few days walking, riding Muni, and cabbing around SF. Enjoy your trip! ^

KathyWdrf is correct, Sutter Stockton rates are always cheaper than 4th & Mission garage. And the distance from your hotel is pretty similar.

But for a contrarian view, I would urge you to keep the car for a day if you have time to tour the city. An automobile will allow you to visit the Palace of Fine Arts, Legion of Honor, Cliff House, Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, GG Bridge, Haight Ashbury, view from Twin Peaks, etc. You can do all of these in one day if you have a car, or spend hours schlepping on public transit (or paying high taxi fares). And parking is easy to find, except in the Haight (and perhaps Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf, though you won't need a car for those places).

I second Boraxo's idea. Although many of the listed attractions are reachable via transit, some of the frequencies on some of these routes are not as great as they are on bus lines that serve the Central (downtown) area.

As an example, to get to the Marin side of the GG Bridge, you would need to take a separate transit system (Golden Gate Transit, not the San Francisco Muni). The last thing you want to do is to waste precious vacation time wating at bus stops.

Lastly, don't forget that there are many good restaurants out in the neighborhoods, such as the Chinese restaurants on Clement Street in the Richmond (convenient when you're going out to GG Park).

The Fifth and Mission Parking Garage (which runs the full city block from Fourth Street to Fifth Street) has its own website:

http://www.fifthandmission.com/


Since you're staying at the Palace, you'd want to park as close to the Fourth Street end of the garage as possible Iif you look at the picture on the website home page, the corner with the curved glass facade is the Fourth Street end of the garage). It's $22 for up to 24 hours.