WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH — A local beach town met with its parking contractor ahead of the 2025 season to go over potential increased parking rates and spaces, and the use of artificial intelligence.
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Pivot Parking CEO Scott Diggs presented the updates for next year’s recommendations to Wrightsville Beach’s Board of Alderman. Pivot oversees approximately 1,800 parking spots in Wrightsville Beach. The company became the town’s parking overseer in January 2020 and also manages parking in Carolina Beach, Surf City and Wilmington.
The contractor is recommending aldermen raise daily rates by $5 next year; this would affect all-day rates only, not hourly. Parking in regular spaces currently costs $25 for a daily pass and $30 in premium spaces; the latter includes 541 spots that are closer to the beach and priced higher. Pivot has proposed raising daily parking rates in regular lots to $30 and premium lots to $35 in the 2025 season, which runs March 1 to Oct. 31.
“I think that would get you a little bit more aligned with Kure and Carolina beach,” Diggs said.
He did not recommend raising hourly rates; premium spots are charged $6 hourly and regular spots are $5.
Currently, Carolina Beach charges $6 per hour or $25 per day from March through October for its town-owned lots, while premium lots are $7 per hour or $35 per day. Onstreet parking remains $5 per hour without a daily rate allowed. Kure Beach’s rates are $5 hourly and $20 a day.
Diggs called 2024 a “super season” with high revenue for the town of Wrightsville Beach. According to Town Manager Haynes Brigman, the total revenues are not in for this year, as the fiscal year calendar year runs from July 1 through June 30.
However, last fiscal year — July 1, 2023 to June 31, 2024 — Wrightsville Beach’s total parking revenue was $7.9 million with $1.4 million for the parking program’s direct expenses, Brigman wrote to Port City Daily in an email. These figures do not include indirect expenses, such as police, fire, and beach maintenance.
“Wrightsville Beach remains a highly desirable area for both local and out-of-state visitors,” Brigman wrote.
Diggs said 581,000 people paid for parking this season and showed transaction data indicating Wrightsville Beach had visitors from every state in 2024.
In addition to raising all-day rates and considering AI technology, Diggs recommended converting the town’s 11 lifeguard spots to premium paid parking. This would eliminate free, dedicated spaces for the town’s 92 lifeguards.
“So, just an idea would be to potentially take those lifeguard spaces out and give them free parking somewhere,” Diggs said.
He suggested giving people who are issued parking citations a longer period to pay. Currently, anyone who receives a citation will have three days to pay it before a penalty fee of $60 is incurred. Diggs said, due to complaints, he thought the escalation period should be extended to five days — short enough to get the payments dealt with quickly, but long enough for people to pay on time.
“It could potentially cost the town a little bit of revenue,” Diggs said.
PCD asked Brigman how much revenue the town received from late citations in the 2023-2024 fiscal year but did not receive an answer by press; this will be updated upon response.
“In my personal opinion, I don’t think that is a big number,” Diggs added, “and I don’t think it matters. I think the customer service decision on that one would outweigh the revenue.”
Pivot is increasingly relying on artificial intelligence of its parking functions, such as in issuing citations. The goal is to become more efficient.
“AI is steering the parking business,” Diggs told the aldermen.
He proposed a fixed camera enforcement (FCE) system in conjunction with a license plate-recognition (LPR) system to be piloted at select parking lots in Wrightsville Beach. The fixed cameras would be equipped with plate recognition technology and could be installed at a lot’s designated entry and exit points. The cameras would scan plates as vehicles enter and exit to track the time in between. This data would then be compared to the lot’s payment data to sort out which motorists have and have not paid.
The tech could give more accurate and efficient readings on occupancy and help create better informed citations. It even writes up its own citations, unenforced by in-person, human verification.
“We can either not enforce it at all, and then the system will notify us and we mail citations to people, or … it can notify our people to go to the lot to cite those vehicles,” Diggs explained.
The citations were a cause of concern for the few residents in attendance at Monday’s meeting, as AI generally lacks the nuance needed to evaluate various situations.
A main point discussed was if a car pulls into a LPR-enforced lot and waits 15 minutes before leaving — whether waiting for a spot to open or someone picking up a kid from camp — the camera could wrongfully write it up for a parking citation, despite the car never having parked. AI would require less on-site labor for monitoring the lots, so there wouldn’t be a person to verify the situation.
Diggs recommended using AI for data only, tracking how many cars are coming and going from the lots. He suggested the data could be used to inform real-time signage — such as those place near a bridge or before highly trafficked turns — to better inform people where parking is available and by proxy help alleviate congestion.
“We have a ton of data. It’s just, how do we get the data into the hands of the customer?” Diggs asked.
The newest tech improvements also include allowing payments from Apple Pay and Google Wallet through a recently implemented text-to-park payment method. There will be a license-plate scanning function while paying to prevent typos made from manually entering plate numbers.
Alderman Zeke Partin mentioned that Kure and Carolina beaches have less parking spaces now due to the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the beach towns’ renourishment contracts. USACE states there must equal parking at equal rates allotted to both residents and visitors. This led to a discussion about if there will be fewer parking spaces closer to the beach overall and if resident passes will change.
Wrightsville Beach allows town residents to purchase a sticker or hang-tag for $50 to park in paid spaces. The permits are applicable in regular, $5-an-hour parking lots, not premium lots.
“It can’t be discriminating in favor of the actual residents,” Mayor Darryl Mills said. “We are dealing now with the fact we give residents the hanging tag system and we charge everybody else by the hour, by the day — that’s a fight.”
However, next year is not a renourishment cycle for Wrightsville Beach. Wrightsville Beach’s most recent cycle was completed on March 31.
Mills said the resident permits don’t work in premium, $6-an-hour lots because USACE regulations are still upheld in those areas — both residents and non-residents are required to pay $6 hourly. Because resident passes don’t work in premium lots, Mills indicated the town is working in a gray area and it keeps USACE “at bay.”
“But you know, those guys are kind of slippery and they’ll change the rules on you,” Mills commented about USACE.
Alderman Hank Miller mentioned the board should consider passes for contractors and subcontractors, who need parking for a month or more while working on the island temporarily. Currently, they have the option to buy daily or weekly passes, which may work for someone whose job is relegated to only three days.
“But the guy, the people that are building houses are where we have the problems and the complaints,” Miller said. “I’d like to see them have a monthly option; maybe a monthly rate.”
Miller requested that Diggs implement this recommendation in his proposal for the next meeting and come up with some ideas.
A formal proposal from Pivot Parking will be given at the Wrightsville Beach Board of Alderman meeting on Jan. 9, where final decisions on next year’s parking program are expected to be made.
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