Lots of families in Noe Valley have more than one car. If we can get folks to downsize a car and use City Carshare or Zipcars as a back-up, there’ll be more room for everyone on the street.

If you can’t find parking at all, you just might go home without even stopping the first time!

But I do agree that we need smarter meters – if we want people to actually be able to use them instead of carrying around a sack of quarters all the time.

Tiff, that sucks about MTA raising scooter/motorcycle parking by 400%. But they aren’t necessarily better for then environment – they usually lack a catalytic converter which removes most of the particulates. And yes, this is one of the most expensive city, but a BIG reason for that is because we subsidize cars heavily. Housing is more expensive because parking is usually included, real estate downtown is more expensive because land is being used for parking instead of office/shopping space, and transit is more expensive because the budget was closed on the backs of transit riders and not spread out to those who drive (not to mention that MUNI is slow mostly due to traffic congestion).

If we had parking technology like Oakland or Berkeley (where you can pay by cash or credit for a block of time), and

If we weren’t in a recession and our businesses weren’t already struggling,

Then I think we might consider it. Being that’s not the case, I don’t think it’s the right time to institute this change.

NOW you want us to pay more?? And almost all day?
Maybe you’ll decrease car use a little.. but what about the times when you need your car to run an errand.. move something? SF is already one of the most expensive cities in the US… let’s just keep racking it up!!! I don’t think you understand the repercussions of this increase. It’s already a total pain… and not everyone in this city makes SIX FIGURES.

Meters in much of SF are ridiculous (a quarter for —8 minutes?? Hardly enough time purchase anything). If you are elderly, fearful of late night transit, whatever, and coming to downtown to go to dinner or the theater, only to get a large parking ticket—you just might not come again.

Unless the City plans on making evening meters reasonable—parking up to 2 hours at a time—sorry but I can’t be for it.

http://sfbike.org/download/SFBC_meter_hours.pdf

Email your own opinion (support for the Extended Meter Hours Study and expeditious implementation of its recommendations, I would hope) to:

Tom Nolan, Chairman, SFMTA Board of Directors
MTABoard@SFMTA.com

and copy in

Mayor Gavin Newsom
gavin.newsom@sfgov.org

as well as your Supervisor, or at least Board President David Chiu — see the SFBC’s Contact Your Leaders page for addresses:

http://sfbike.org/?leaders

and do come speak up Tuesday afternoon if you can, this is important stuff . . .

1) The study does not address the number of disabled placard users that are “immune” to any price/time limit scheme, nor how disabled placard users affect the occupancy levels measured. Yet without this data, policy decisions on price, occupancy, and turnover are being made in its recommendations. I think we can all agree that if disabled placard users had to pay, it would be easy to find a parking space in downtown.

2) The study automatically assumes that the current rates and meter start times are appropriate City-wide, but makes that assumption without acknowledging that many neighborhood commercial areas are nowhere near 85% occupancy between 9 and 11 am. Even Shoup agrees that in such situations, the rates during those time periods should be lowered, or that the meters shouldn’t even operate during those times, and I’d bet that many of the merchants would agree that morning hours should be cheaper/free (if occupancy #’s support it) as a reasonable compromise to extending nighttime hours.