It’s especially hard to find parking at three popular trail heads in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve system. They are Echo Canyon at Camelback Mountain, Piestewa Peak and Pima Canyon at South Mountain.

Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation Ken Vonderscher described the problem. 

“What happens is there’s neighborhood impacts, because there’s not enough spaces and we get a lot of illegal parking. And then we have all those people who are hiking the preserves on all the trails, and so there’s an impact to the resource and so that’s the issue we are working through right now,” Vonderscher said.

He said one possible solution could be to install parking meters at the three popular trail heads. Vonderscher said the parks board gave initial approval to fee-based parking four years ago, but it was never started. The board is set to discuss the issue at Phoenix City Hall’s upper council chambers Thursday evening.