Streetsblog San Francisco

The SFMTA Board of Directors approved several parking policy changes Tuesday, including a pilot program to provide residential parking permits for child care providers. The board also decided to end free parking for SFMTA employees and establish a 2-hour time limit for broken parking meters.

A number of people testified for and against allowing nannies to be eligible for use of their employers’ residential parking permits. The testimony swayed some directors to favor a pilot program with some conditions, including requiring neighborhood approval, tighter restrictions on the children’s ages, and strict penalties for fraudulent applications.

Directors Cheryl Brinkman and Bruce Oka were originally opposed to the idea of expanding subsidized parking accommodation in the face of the city’s Transit First policy. “Every car trip we add negatively impacts every single one of our transit riders,” said Brinkman. “We can’t talk about increasing [Muni] efficiency and saving money without recognizing that the only way to do that is to get our buses out from behind the car traffic that’s out on the streets.”

Several directors spoke of a dilemma they felt between supporting both a Transit First and a family-friendly city. ”I do believe in San Francisco and the Transit First policy, and I think it’s critical we review that policy and understand it,” said recently inaugurated Director Leona Bridges. “However, I also…think the children of San Francisco are important, and I also think we should think about the elderly and the disabled.”

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The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) presented the results of the comprehensive parking study it started in 2006 to the Board of Supervisors today, fleshing out many of the parking management principles espoused by parking guru Donald Shoup in his High Cost of Free Parking and recommending a plethora of solutions for managing the curb more strategically (presentation PDF).

Throughout the study, the TA clearly embraced Shoup's market principles for pricing the curb in accord with demand for space so that parking, particularly in commercial districts and spillover neighborhoods, is best utilized to serve the city's competing interests for the scarce resource.

The study is enormous and at the end of the presentation by the TA, the Board decided to extend its review for one month, as requested by Board President David Chiu. Chiu was concerned that the study didn't properly address issues for "the low-income neighborhoods, Mission, Chinatown, Tenderloin, where low-income folks who have cars don't have access to garages. I think that if you go forward with some of the recommendations here it could create really adverse conditions that I don't think were thoroughly vetted in their study."

"I do think at the end of it we'll probably end up approving the study," he added, though he said he wants to bring the stakeholders he assumes would be effected together to air their grievances.

The study estimated there are more than 600,000 parking spaces in San Francisco, of which 320,000 are on-street and only 24,000 are regulated with parking meters. Residential parking permits (RPPs), as evidenced by the map above, have been added throughout the city in an ad-hoc fashion and in many areas are not synthesized with metered parking.

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Why is San Francisco -- considered by many around the world to be a “progressive” and “green" city with a Transit First policy -- still debating whether to extend meter hours and parking enforcement, even in the face of a crippling Muni budget deficit? Didn't we merge Muni with the Department of Parking and Traffic precisely so policy decisions about management of the streets would benefit the operations of transit, bicycling, and walking?

Some politicians, including the Mayor, apparently can't stop viewing these issues from behind the wheels of their SUVs. They can't see past the myth that raising parking fees will drive away business, thus perpetuating an erroneous stereotype that most urban shoppers drive. My colleague Matthew Roth wrote a great piece debunking that popular fallacy, noting that the majority of shoppers don't drive to shop in areas like North Beach and that in aggregate, transit riders, cyclists and walkers spend more than drivers. Other cities that have managed street space in accord with Shoupian market-rate pricing and curbside vacancy targets, and have invested additional revenues in pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure improvements, have seen a rise in business, not a drop.

San Francisco could and should do the same, but the MTA -- namely its chief, Nat Ford, and its Board, all appointees who rarely act independently -- has bowed to pressure from the Mayor, and Supervisors Carmen Chu and Bevan Dufty and taken Sunday and evening parking enforcement until 10 p.m. off the table as a much-needed revenue measure to fund Muni. Instead, the MTA is going to study extending it to 8 p.m. Supervisor John Avalos and four of his colleagues on the Board want it penciled back in the budget. Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, who was on the fence, is coming around and might join other members of the Board of Supervisors next week in rejecting the MTA budget if Ford doesn't follow the recommendations of a "Transit Justice Package," and make some changes. As Supervisor David Campos has noted, asking for a $15 million readjustment is not a radical proposal.

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Despite meeting for more than seven hours yesterday, the BART Board of Directors never managed to discuss the budget, in no small part because of the drama and theatrics of a public enraged about the shooting of Oscar Grant on January 1st and the release of an internal audit that found BART fails to award contracts to minority and female contractors commensurate with demographics and stated agency goals.  

Over an hour into intense public comment calling for the firing of BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger and Police Chief Gary Gee, Gabriel Meyers, 31, who had been visibly agitated and unstable throughout the meeting, hurling epithets from behind the speakers at the podium, rushed at Dugger and sprayed her with a tube of red paint. 

A quick acting BART police officer, who Board President Tom Blalock later commended and called "a runningback" for how quickly he crossed the room, tackled Meyers and subdued him.  Meyers was charged with two counts of battery, one count of resisting arrest, and one count of disrupting a lawful assembly.

No Justice No BART organizers and a Grant family member present at the meeting condemned the attack and said Meyers was not associated with their efforts to seek justice for the shooting.  Several protesters in the hall were upset by the attack and said they knew it would dominate the news coverage of the event, detracting from their message.

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