In a move to gain the support of Supervisor Bevan Dufty, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu has stripped language from his proposed garage legislation that would have ensured all new garage additions to existing buildings in Chinatown, North Beach and Telegraph Hill conform with Better Streets Plan (BSP) guidelines.

The original legislation, which Chiu sponsored, would have required garage additions in sections of those neighborhoods to receive a conditional use authorization from the Planning Commission. Garages would be blocked if they had been built following no-fault evictions or didn't meet the design guidelines in the BSP.

At Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting, Chiu announced that the BSP provision would be removed, and only buildings with four units or more would need to go through a full discretionary review process at Planning -- significantly lowering the bar for adding new garages compared to the original proposal.

Chiu said the revised legislation would return to the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee for a public hearing on Monday. The revised legislation, he said, "would really help to protect the core purpose of why we're moving this legislation," while dealing with the concerns raised by Dufty and others.

That's still an important victory for protecting housing, said Livable City's Tom Radulovich, but a setback in terms of ensuring better conditions for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit riders.

"The consolation is we've got the Planning Department talking about it for the first time," said Radulovich, a principal supporter of the BSP provision. "It's been a big loophole in the Planning Code because the addition of a non-required garage has a big impact."

Revised legislation hasn't made its way to the public yet, but it will likely still include restrictions on driveways on portions of major commercial streets like Broadway and Columbus, and could still remove parking minimums in the affected neighborhoods.

Garage addition companies, landlords and condo conversion supporters who oppose the measure have heavily lobbied Dufty, who could provide a critical override vote in case Mayor Newsom vetoes the legislation. Dufty has said he supports legislation to limit no-fault Ellis Act evictions, but has been cool on further restrictions to new garage additions in Chinatown, North Beach and Telegraph Hill.

You can contact Supervisor Dufty's office about the legislation by email at Bevan.Dufty@sfgov.org or by phone at (415) 554-6968.

For a second time in two weeks, the Board of Supervisors today delayed a final vote on legislation that would impose stricter rules on the construction of new garages in Chinatown, North Beach and Telegraph Hill. Unlike the first delay, however, the Board voted to make a small amendment to the measure today, passing the amended bill on first reading. It will be back next week for a final vote.

The amendment today fixed an initial error in the drafting of the legislation, said its sponsor, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu. The portion of Broadway included in the measure would stretch from the Embarcadero to Mason Street, not all the way to Polk Street, as the initial legislation had it.

After initially approving the legislation on first reading by a 7-2 vote on February 9, the supervisors voted on February 23 to continue the measure until today. Supervisor Bevan Dufty, whose vote would be crucial to override a potential veto from the Mayor, has asked for more time to talk to people on both sides of the debate before taking a final vote.

Garage addition companies, landlords and condo conversion supporters are reportedly pressuring Dufty to vote down the measure, while affordable housing, transit, pedestrian and bicycle advocates are rallying behind the garage legislation.

After approving the legislation on first reading by a 7-2 vote on February 9, the supervisors voted on February 23 to continue the measure until tomorrow. Supervisor Bevan Dufty, whose vote would be crucial to override a potential veto from the Mayor, has wavered in his position on the legislation, saying the measure moved through the legislative process too quickly for him and his constituents to give it a close enough look.

Garage addition companies, landlords and condo conversion supporters are reportedly pressuring Dufty to vote down the measure, while affordable housing, transit, pedestrian and bicycle advocates are rallying behind the garage legislation.

You can let Supervisor Dufty know your thoughts on the legislation by emailing him at bevan.dufty@sfgov.org or by calling his office at 415-554-5184.

Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR) (Photo: UPI)

House leaders did not fix the provision contested by the House transport committee that would award nearly 60 percent of $932 million in grants to four states while excluding 22 other states. The transport panel's chairman, Jim Oberstar (D-MN), has secured written support from Senate leaders to unwind that language in a future bill.

Practically speaking, the House's changes mean that the Senate would need to hold another vote before the jobs bill can become law.

Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR), Oberstar's top lieutenant, made the case for the bill on the House floor. In addition to extending the 2005 transportation law until the end of the year, DeFazio observed, the jobs bill would allow the highway trust fund to begin collecting interest payments after 10 years of forgoing them to the Treasury.

"We're now going to reclaim that money ... it's going to be a billion dollars a month," he said.

Republicans, led by Rep. Steven LaTourette (OH), countered that the jobs bill's $13 billion in tax credits for new hires would be better used to pay for more infrastructure investment.

Late Update: The House cleared the bill on a 217-201 vote.

Mayor Newsom fields questions from reporters today at Showplace Triangle. Streetsblog reporter Michael Rhodes in foreground. Photo by Bryan Goebel.

MTA Board Director Bruce Oka has confirmed to Streetsblog that a proposal to increase monthly Fast Pass prices for seniors, youth and the disabled will not be considered to help solve the MTA's budget crisis after the outcry from those communities.

"If push comes to shove I would rather do fare hikes in a way that will hurt the least number of people. But we heard from the public that seniors, disabled and youth cannot afford what they’re paying now," said Oka, a longtime disabled rights advocate, who added that he would rather see a hike in the monthly Fast Pass price for adults than service cuts. The proposal was to raise the discount Fast Pass prices by $10. They are already scheduled to go up to $20 in May from the current $15.

Streetsblog has learned that the fare hikes proposal has actually been unofficially off the table for a few weeks, but as Oka explained, the Mayor's Office still wanted it on tomorrow's MTA Board agenda. The Board will vote on a series of proposals to bridge the agency's $16.9 million budget gap, including a ten percent cut to Muni service and various monthly Fast Pass increases. A broad coalition of groups is expected to turn out to oppose the measures.

Oka said he will not vote in favor of service cuts tomorrow, and believes there might be enough votes on the MTA Board to reject them. He added that he plans to continue pressing for extending parking meter enforcement, but might be the lone director to support it.

Mayor Gavin Newsom confirmed as much about the fare hikes this afternoon while speaking to reporters after the Pavement to Parks announcement at Showplace Triangle. Newsom, responding to a question from Streetsblog, said it's possible $1.7 million of the $17.5 million the MTA is expected to receive in redirected Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) funds could be used to fill the gap left by eliminating that proposal.

"We could use that, but that would be a temporary reprieve, because it doesn't annualize to address that concern next year," he said. "But it doesn't take TWU off the hook to step up and do the right thing."

Newsom said that of all the proposals to reduce the MTA deficit, the proposed Fast Pass hike for seniors, youth and the disabled "is the one thing I want off the table, and I'm confident we'll get there." He said he had a meeting planned on the issue later this afternoon, presumably with MTA Chief Nat Ford.

Earlier this week, Ford told supervisors, acting in their role as the board of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, that the $1.7 million would be used for operations, mostly for maintenance. The MTA has not officially clarified whether that money could alleviate fare hikes.

In his remarks to reporters, Newsom, while acknowledging the drastic statewide cuts to transit, said service cuts and other painful budget remedies before the MTA Board tomorrow rests on whether Muni operators are willing to give up a raise.

"We've asked the labor union, the Muni drivers, the Muni operators, to step up. They're due a raise and we're saying, please don't take a raise in this environment, don't make things worse, help us out, help the riders out. Help seniors, youth and disabled out. If you do, we won't raise the fare for seniors, youth and disabled, we won't make the service cuts as acute as we otherwise would."

Newsom said the choices the MTA Board makes tomorrow will be "conditional choices, subject to what the union does next week." Transit Workers Union members rejected a recent package of concessions, with many operators saying they weren't properly informed about the proposal. Newsom, as he has before, vowed to press ahead with Supervisor Sean Elsbernd's proposed charter amendment if drivers don't agree to concessions.

Newsom said extending parking meter enforcement to Sundays was still under consideration, but that it wouldn't happen anytime soon.

"What I am adamantly, vehemently against, is extending the parking meter hours in this economy, and hurting small businesses. For those who are eager to do it, take a look at what happened in the East Bay, and how that was received," he said, prompting cackles from some reporters and TV photographers. "Meters have been increased over the last number of years, people forget that, substantially increased since 2004. It's not as if parking has not become more punitive."

Still, Newsom admitted that some businesses have contacted him, urging him to do it because it would actually be favorable for business, with higher turnaround.

Oka said the Mayor is so opposed to extending parking meter hours that Newsom refused a request to do it downtown where Oka believed he could get support from merchants.

Update: In response to this story, MTA spokesperson Judson True called to clarify Oka's remarks, and said the discount Fast Pass proposal is not off the table, and will be decided by the MTA Board tomorrow. "Clearly, this is a painful proposal and we want to find another alternative but the proposal is very much on the table until our board decides otherwise in public, and there is no guarantee that will happen tomorrow.”

If the MTA Board approves budget solutions being presented by staff on Friday, the price of a youth monthly Fast Pass will go up to $30, regardless of family income. But members of San Francisco's Youth Commission say there are better ways to close the MTA's $16.9 million end-of-year budget gap.

A more equitable option, they argue, would be to extend parking meter enforcement hours.

"The city has a Transit First policy in which it's supposed to promote public transportation and bicycling and other modes of transportation to counter personal driving use, and this increase goes counter to that," said Nicholas Quesada, chairman of the city's 17-member Youth Commission and a senior at School of the Arts High School.

Members of the Youth Commission and other young Muni riders made that point in force at yesterday's Board of Supervisors meeting, calling on the supes and the MTA Board to reject an increase in the youth monthly Fast Pass price.

They're sympathetic to the MTA's budget situation: After all, the state has taken $179 million from the agency over the past three years. But Leah LaCroix, an SF State student who chairs the Youth Commission's Planning, Land Use and City Services Committee, said new revenue options can't be taken off the table just because they are politically difficult.

"I know this may be really hard, but I would support increasing the time of parking meters," she said. "Things like that would get it off the backs of the youth."

Supervisor Eric Mar snaps a picture of the Board of Supervisors chamber filled with youth protesting Muni fare increases on Tuesday.

Quesada, who commutes to school by the 44 or 52 from the Excelsior district, notes that while the youth Fast Pass cost would be making a 300 percent increase from its price less than a year ago, not everyone has shared the burden equally to balance Muni's budget, and he thinks most San Francisco youths would support extending parking meter hours in the evenings or to Sundays instead.

"A lot of us take public transportation to and from school. I think that's kind of a suburban thing: When you turn 16 you go out and try to get your license. I don't have my license. I can get by on a bicycle and the bus."

For 70 percent of public school students in San Francisco, getting to school means taking public transportation. A year ago, that meant purchasing a $10 youth-specific monthly pass - still pricier than the free school bus ride many other municipalities offer, but with a lot more freedom to move about town sans parental chauffeur. That price would go up to $30 if the MTA Board approves staff recommendations this Friday. In that case, a family with two adults and two kids would pay $180 a month for Muni passes, or $120 if their income qualifies the parents for the $30 Lifeline pass.

Extending parking meter enforcement hours could pay for a youth low-income discount pass, which currently doesn't exist, said Youth Commissioner Hillary Liang, a sophomore at Lowell High School and a Chinatown resident. "I think a lot of other people I know also support this," she said. "Many youths want to focus on their studies instead of taking a part-time job just to pay for the transportation to go to school."

Advocates for parking reform have long cited another benefit of increasing parking meter enforcement hours: It might actually be possible to find a parking spot on Sunday afternoon. Quesada made that argument on Tuesday as well.

"People will move their cars and maybe drive less and take more public transportation, increasing the revenue to Muni. So, it seems like it'd be a win-win."

Surface parking stretches halfway to the horizon in the heart of downtown Wichita, Kansas. Image: Wichita Walkshop via Flickr.

If you haven't checked out the ITDP parking report we covered yesterday, it's a highly readable piece of research, walking you through parking policy's checkered past and potentially brighter future.

In addition to describing six cases of innovative parking strategies, the authors draw from a wide-ranging body of evidence about the woeful state of most current parking policy, marshaling revealing facts and figures. We culled some of the ones that leap out the most. Enjoy:

• Ninety-nine percent of U.S. car trips begin and end in a free parking space.
• The average automobile is parked 95 percent of the time.
• Although many businesses today believe they benefit from free parking, curbside parking meters were actually introduced in 1935 by an Oklahoma City department store owner. He wanted to increase parking turnover so that there would always be spaces available for his customers.
• Conventional parking policy counsels providing enough spots to handle car storage on the 30th busiest hour of the entire year, usually the weekend before Christmas. That means intentionally planning for an oversupply of parking the other 8,730 hours of the year.
• At free parking spaces, 40 to 60 percent of vehicles overstay posted time limits.
• Parking typically represents a full 10 percent of development costs. What's more, the people who actually park only pay 5 percent of the cost of non-residential parking, meaning that public subsidies and developer capital pay for the rest.
• In San Francisco, parking requirements have reduced the number of affordable housing units nonprofit developers can build by 20 percent, with each residence costing 20 percent more to build than it would have without parking.
• Seventy percent of Southern California suburban office developments built exactly the number of parking spaces required by law, suggesting that parking minimums are forcing developers to build more parking than they want to.
• How much space does parking eat up? Office space typically requires 175 to 250 square feet per person. In comparison, curbside parking requires 200 square feet per vehicle, and garages require 300 to 350 square feet per vehicle.
• Even in the Park Smart pilot areas of Greenwich Village, where peak hour meter rates have been raised, on-street parking still costs $12 per hour less than off-street parking. At that rate, cruising for 15 minutes to find an on-street space pays off at the equivalent of a $100,000 annual salary.
• NYC has 32 fewer meters per capita than Chicago.
• Only two major U.S. cities, Houston and Chicago, are adding more metered parking. In Houston's case, they are more than doubling their metered spaces in coordination with the city's light rail project.

Supervisor Bevan Dufty.

After approving the legislation on first reading by a 7-2 vote on February 9, the supervisors voted today to continue the measure until March 9, a move designed to give the measure's authors time to court Supervisor Bevan Dufty's vote, which would be crucial to override a potential veto from the Mayor.

Dufty reiterated a point today that he made to Streetsblog yesterday: The measure moved through the legislative process too quickly for him and his constituents to give it an adequate review. Supervisor Chris Daly questioned why Dufty was now hesitant to support the legislation after initially voting for it, but Dufty said his initial vote was intended to provide additional time to study the measure.

Garage addition companies, landlords and condo conversion supporters are reportedly pressuring Dufty to vote down the measure, while affordable housing, transit, pedestrian and bicycle advocates are rallying behind the garage legislation.

Graphic: ITDP

"There was a 35-year parking coma during which the federal government, cities, and environmentalists forgot why parking was important," said John Kaehny, who co-authored the report with Matthew Rufo and UPenn professor Rachel Weinberger. "This study shows people are starting wake up and understand that parking is one of most important influences on how cities work and what form of travel people choose to use."

The early 70s parking limits beat back the cycle of more car storage, wider roadways, and greater sprawl that decimates urban areas. The underlying idea was simple: Manage the supply of parking, and you can reduce the demand for driving. Yet in America this notion has gone largely unheeded, even in cities.

Instead, the authors note, parking policy is typically divorced from transportation policy and goals like reducing congestion or encouraging walking and biking. In most of our urban areas, planners determine parking volumes using suburban standards, drawing heavily on ill-suited recommendations in "Parking Generation," a manual published by the Institute for Transportation Engineers. The product is abundant, cheap parking -- much of which sits unused most of the time.

Fully 99 percent of car trips in America end in free parking, an incentive that crowds out all other modes of transportation. "Even when the price of parking is free," said Weinberger, "it’s far from free."

The resulting congestion impedes the effectiveness of transit. Traffic volumes and double-parking make bicycling less pleasant and more dangerous. Walkable environments give way to curb cuts, dead walls, and land-devouring parking facilities that spread destinations farther apart. The whole vicious cycle is heavily subsidized, with the cost of parking absorbed into the price of everything from housing to movie tickets.

"In a time of economic distress, we can’t afford to continue these policies,"  said ITDP's Michael Replogle. "Continuing to subsidize parking is very costly for all of us."

Surface parking in downtown Minneapolis. Photo: ITDP/Zachary Korb

In San Francisco and New York, programs to bring the price of curbside parking more in line with off-street parking are reducing the incentive to cruise endlessly for a cheap spot. In Portland, planners have reduced parking requirements for new development near transit lines, helping to improve walkability and increase ridership.

This parking structure in downtown Boulder is wrapped with street-level retail. Image: ITDP/City of Boulder

Other cities will be able to replicate the innovations in the report, said UCLA planning professor Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking. "Weinberger, Kaehny, and Rufo show how cities can begin to repair the damage caused by decades of bad planning for parking," he said. "The case studies of six cities that have reformed their parking policies provide clear blueprints that any city can adapt to fit the local circumstances."

Preparing for a new garage addition. Photo: Michael Rhodes

The Board of Supervisors will take a second and final vote tomorrow on the legislation, which passed in a first reading by a 7-2 vote, including an aye from Dufty. Since the Mayor hasn't come out with a position on the legislation yet, proponents hope Dufty will vote in favor of the legislation again, giving it an eight-vote supermajority in case the Mayor vetoes it. (Supervisor John Avalos was absent from the first vote, but the measure's supporters are hopeful he will lend his support tomorrow.)

While he voted for the measure on February 9, Dufty said he did so at the time to give it further study before a final vote. He is reportedly being heavily lobbied by garage addition companies and other groups that oppose restrictions on condo-conversions (including the group Plan C, the Examiner reported.)

"I have not decided what I'm going to do, but I definitely plan to talk to David Chiu before mid-morning tomorrow and let him know what my thoughts are," Dufty told Streetsblog today. "I suspected that I was going to have some concerns, and I definitely have concerns."

Chief among those concerns, he said, is whether the legislation is focused on preventing "no fault" Ellis Act evictions in which tenants are evicted to make room for garages. "I don't fully understand the crafting of the legislation, but if this were focusing on Ellis Acted buildings, I would vote for it in a minute," said Dufty. "But it seems much broader and more complex and convoluted."

Dufty said he's much less enthusiastic about requiring Conditional Use Authorization for all new garages additions in Chinatown, North Beach and Telegraph Hill, which he fears would place too great a burden on the Planning Department.

A sidewalk in Chinatown, which would be covered by the new garage legislation. Photo: Michael Rhodes

Currently, adding a garage is generally allowed in existing residential buildings in the affected neighborhoods, with the burden on opponents of specific garage additions to file a Discretionary Review application to try to block individual garage additions. The new legislation would flip the process, requiring property owners hoping to build new garages in Chinatown, North Beach and Telegraph Hill to seek a Conditional Use Authorization from the Planning Commission.

Installing a garage in an existing building in the area would be permitted as a "conditional use" only if there have been no "no fault" evictions from the building in the past ten years. Garage additions would also need to conform with the Better Streets Policy, and wouldn't be allowed to decrease sidewalk accessibility or front on a public right-of-way narrower than 41 feet.

The legislation would also eliminate minimum off-street parking requirements for residential uses and institute a maximum parking cap in the Broadway Neighborhood Commercial District, North Beach Neighborhood Commercial District, and the Chinatown Mixed Use and Community Business Districts.

"He certainly supported it on the first vote, but apparently he's being lobbied by SF Garage, the people who stick garages into buildings, because it will make it harder to put garages into buildings in a corner of the city," said Tom Radulovich, Executive Director of Livable City, one of the legislation's principal supporters, along with the Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC) and Telegraph Hill Dwellers.

Legislation Could Make it Easier to Convert Space to Dwelling Units

Radulovich said that by eliminating the minimum parking requirement for new units in the zone covered by the legislation, it would be easier for property owners to convert underutilized garage space into living quarters, since it wouldn't be necessary to include a parking space for the newly carved-out unit.

"If you don't exceed the density limit, which does not change, units which meet those limits but that are otherwise code legal would be permitted," he said. "We hope it would help with the legalization of some units which are there and occupied that don't exceed the density limits."

That, said Radulovich, could actually provide building owners with greater flexibility to build new in-law units in existing buildings, especially when they're already spending money on seismic retrofitting. That could mean new business for the very garage-addition companies that are lobbying Dufty not to support the measure, he said.

"We're hoping for a very healthy business for SF Garage Co., but not necessarily always installing garages," he added.

Dufty said he's not in a position to comment on the potential for converting non-dwelling space to living units, an issue he said is best answered by the Planning Department. (Planning Director John Rahaim couldn't be reached for comment.)

Dufty planned to meet with the City Attorney Monday afternoon, and said he has spoken with CCDC about the legislation. The measure moved through the legislative process very quickly, he said, and he's still hoping to pin down whether it is primarily about preventing Ellis Act evictions, or if it has other consequences he wouldn't support.

"I'm just not sure how openly recognized this issue was, and then all of a sudden it seems like it's a firestorm and I'm kind of looking around and going, wow, this isn't as cut-and-dried as it appeared to be," said Dufty.

The legislation's supporters have stressed that it is not intended as a first step towards a citywide restriction on garages, but rather addresses a specific issue in District 3, where tenants have frequently been evicted to make room for new garages.

You can contact Supervisor Dufty's office about the legislation by email at Bevan.Dufty@sfgov.org or by phone at (415) 554-6968. The Board of Supervisors vote on the legislation is tomorrow, February 22, at City Hall, Room 200, during the regular 2 p.m. full Board meeting.

Vanderbilt recently appeared at a forum with parking guru Donald Shoup and asked Shoup about this problem of perception. Vanderbilt writes:

If people can't see the parking, they think it doesn't exist. Photo: Corey Holms via Flickr

One part of Shoup’s answer stuck with me: He talked of studying a parking garage in West Hollywood. On the bottom floors, there were cars, and in the empty spaces, plenty of oil stains to indicate past users. On the upper floors, he noted, it looked as if the spaces had never been graced by a single car. And yet the word from drivers was that there was "nowhere to park." But the problem, Shoup noted, is that drivers’ perception parking supply is informed by the parking spaces they can actually see. Call it “parking availability bias”…. And the spaces that are most easily seen, of course, are curb spaces, hence the importance of rational market pricing policies to ensure turnover and vacancy. A few empty spaces (15%) can go a long way.

This perception is a powerful force and leads cities into all kinds of policies that turn out to be misguided and rife with unintended consequences; take the “free holiday parking” approach. Towns hoping to lure shoppers downtown, away from the big boxes, offer up free parking. But beware the power of incentives: Given that many of the best parking spaces in front of local businesses are often occupied (it happens right here in Brooklyn) by the store keepers themselves, the free parking bonanza ends up actually enticing local employees (who would have parked elsewhere or not driven) to grab some free real estate for the day — leaving would-be shoppers with the perception (all-too-real in this case) that there’s "nowhere to park."

The post has already started a lively and informative comment thread. Head over and check it out.

Photo: Postmodern Drunkard

Chiu described his bill as an effort to curb the "recent trend in my district and in other parts of the city where tenants have been evicted from buildings where owners have chosen to build garages."

"What this means is literally we’ve seen a tradeoff of people being forced to move out of San Francisco because someone wanted to put a car in the place of their bedroom or where they used to live," he added.

The legislation would create the Telegraph Hill‐North Beach Residential Special Use District,  eliminate minimum off‐street parking requirements for residential uses, and institute a maximum parking cap in the Broadway Neighborhood Commercial District, North Beach Neighborhood Commercial District, and the Chinatown Mixed Use and Community Business Districts. In addition, the bill would require a Conditional Use Authorization from the Planning Commission every time an owner wanted to install a garage in an existing residential structure. Finally, the bill would prohibit new garage entries and driveways on a stretch of Columbus Avenue and would stop the issuance of minor sidewalk encroachment permits for installing driveways in residential structures that narrow the sidewalk unacceptably [details of bill, PDF].

Supporters of the legislation were pleasantly surprised at last week's Planning Commission meeting, a necessary step for approval of legislation that changes planning code, when Commissioner Christina Olague beefed up the Commission's motion for approval, adding language about no-fault evictions and requiring conditional use authorization for any new garage in the special use district, neither of which were in original Planning Department staff recommendations.

David Noyola, Supervisor Chiu's legislative aide, hoped the lopsided Planning Commission vote in support was a good sign. "I didn’t expect a 6-1 vote recommending the meat of the legislation. I thought they were going to strike the prohibition of no-fault evictions," he said. He also said constituents from Russian Hill and Nob Hill spoke at the Commission meeting, requesting the legislation extend to their neighborhoods, an option Noyola said they would consider in the future if this bill passes.

The bill has to go before the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee, which could happen as early as next week, and then to the full Board, likely in 2-3 weeks. Noyola expects the bill to pass committee and the full board, though the Mayor's support is still uncertain.

Malcolm Yeung of the CCDC said they were pleased with the outcome of the Planning Commission meeting, particularly after staff took out the no-fault eviction proposal, the one piece of the legislation the CCDC was absolutely steadfast in supporting. Yeung also said they weren't resting on the momentary good news and were urging supervisors to lock up the super-majority support needed in case the Mayor decides to veto it.

"Right now pro-tenant legislation has not been going particularly well in the city," he said. "We haven’t talked to the Mayor’s office on this one, but with any pro-tenant legislation, we think we have to get eight votes."

Yeung said the legislation was unique for bringing CCDC together with preservationists and property owners on Telegraph Hill, who want to see the historic character of their neighborhood preserved, and transit advocates who want to see the city reduce its reliance on cars.

Both Noyola and Tom Radulovich, Executive Director Livable City and one of the central proponents of reducing parking throughout the city, noted that the legislation was precedent-setting, particularly because it applied a parking best practice from neighborhood planning zones like Market and Octavia or Rincon Hill, but didn't wait on a multi-year comprehensive plan.

"The bill is a legacy of slow and incremental change in the planning code and a legacy of the sea-change in the Planning Department's thinking about parking," said Radulovich. "In 2005, parking was required everywhere for every use. Recent planning efforts have chipped away at that."

"It's less frequent that we go back to old neighborhoods, saying we’ve come up with what we think is the best for dense neighborhoods and let's export that," said Noyola, who added that the city doesn't need to spend the time and money on vast plans if neighborhoods agree they want less parking. "Telegraph Hill was the original transit-first neighborhood," he noted.

The precedent that could be set by this bill actually worried Yeung, who hoped supervisors from other districts wouldn't block a bill supported by nearly all the stakeholders where it would become law. CCDC is concerned that those supervisors who "have a lot of homeowners in their district could see this as a precedent that they don’t want set everywhere in the city."

"We’re not pushing for a citywide expansion," he assured. "We’re trying to address patterns we see in Chinatown and Telegraph Hill."

Sheila Dixon, outgoing Baltimore mayor, with a new city bus. (Photo: Baltimore Skyline)

The city's new free bus line, dubbed the Charm City Circulator, started rolling through downtown yesterday after some delays, with plans to add two new lines as soon as this spring.

Baltimore, often viewed as the front lines in U.S. cities' battle with blight, chose to fund its bus with a move that would raise hackles in some of its Eastern seaboard neighbors: an increase in the parking tax.

Could Baltimore's bus rollout, coupled with the change of administration, boost the city's chances of winning federal aid for its proposed Red Line light rail project? Time will tell.

As Streetsblog reported in January, drivers nervous about the heavy volume of traffic passing by their parked cars had taken to widespread illegal parking, reducing 19th Avenue's already skinny sidewalks to mere ribbons of cement and adding pedestrian hazards to one of the most dangerous streets in the city.

What's more, as SFPD sergeant Steve Quon told Streetsblog in January, his station was not inclined to enforce sidewalk parking unless there were significant complaints or his station received some of the parking fine revenue.

"There are so many cars on the sidewalk on 19th Avenue, if we cited one, we'd have to cite all of them. That's a lot of citations," said Quon at the time. "There's not a lot of pedestrian traffic on 19th. As you can see, there's nobody on it right now," he said at the time.

Starting in May, however, the MTA's Department of Parking and Traffic (DPT) began flyering illegally parked vehicles with a warning that they were to park in the street between the new white line painted by Caltrans and the curb, or risk being ticketed and towed.

"Supervisor Chu worked with the MTA to do the striping to show people where it was safe to park on the street," said Cammy Blackstone, an aide to Carmen Chu, supervisor for most of the Sunset district. "Obviously, it's just paint, but it gives people a comfort level that it's a reasonable place to be and I can not get wiped out by a car."

"That and the fact the they're probably being ticketed," added Blackstone, who said she's received a lot more calls this year from residents who've gotten parking citations.

MTA spokesperson Judson True confirmed that the DPT had stepped up enforcement in the area. "We did increase our citation issuance earlier this year after the edge line was painted, and after putting warning flyers on vehicles that were partially parked on the sidewalk," True wrote in an email to Streetsblog.

"We are pleased that the sidewalks are now clearer for pedestrians."

The MTA also worked with Caltrans to paint the new line along the parking lane, said True. Caltrans spokesperson Steve Williams said the line was painted as part of a broader effort to improve pedestrian safety on 19th Avenue, which includes a double-fine zone, pedestrian countdown signals, and new ADA-compliant curb ramps.

The Taraval police station didn't rush to take credit for the improved conditions: an officer who answered the phone at the station said DPT enforces parking, and police wouldn't have had anything to do with it.

It's still easy to spot cars parked in driveways on side streets and parts of 19th Avenue, blocking the way for pedestrians, but with the prodding of pedestrian advocates and the support of Supervisor Chu, DPT, and Caltrans, getting cars to park fully in the parking lane has proven refreshingly effective.

19th Avenue then: drivers routinely parked with two wheels on the sidewalk. Photo: Matthew Roth

More illegal parking from earlier this year, before the new enforcement. Photo: Matthew Roth

19th Avenue now: cars parked fully on the street. Photo: Michael Rhodes

While cars are no longer parked with two wheels on the sidewalk, some are still parked with all four wheels in the pedestrian right-of-way. Photo: Michael Rhodes

19th Avenue is still far from a haven for pedestrians.

City parking meters are a gold mine, and in Chicago, Morgan Stanley is rolling in parking riches. Secret company documents leaked to reporters show the company will rake in a 70 percent profit margin this year from its $1.15 billion, 75-year lease of Chicago's parking meters. This profit is on top of the millions Morgan paid to buy new, high-tech meters. The good times will keep on rolling for investors: In 2010, after another meter price hike, Morgan expects to make monthly profits of $4.8 million, roughly 55 percent higher than in 2009.

Graphic: New York Times/Chicago News Cooperative.

Streetsblog has been following the Chicago parking privatization closely because it is the poster child for all that can go wrong with Public Private Partnerships, or PPPs. The basic idea behind a PPP is that the government leases public transportation infrastructure -- say a bridge, highway, airport, or parking meters -- that can generate user fees. In exchange for the fees, a private investor pays the government a large upfront fee or assumes the cost of improving the infrastructure. PPPs are popular in Europe, especially at airports.

Sustainable transportation advocates should care about PPPs for a number of reasons. First, politicians and bureaucrats are captivated by the fantasy that PPPs are the ultimate free lunch, generating billions in transportation investment at no cost to the taxpayer. President Obama's euphemism for PPPs is "creative financing."

In New York, state officials have repeatedly presented a PPP as the way to raise billions for the astronomical cost of replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge. This is dangerous thinking. PPPs do inflict a cost, and it's a big one. Huge amounts of revenue that could be directed to public transit, or crucial road and bridge repair, is instead going to Wall Street.

The second concern is that PPPs allow public officials to skew the public planning and review process and put private profit before public benefit. A private investor has tremendous leverage over what gets built if they are the government's main financing option. The investor's goal is to make money, not to produce the greatest public benefit over many decades.

Despite the latest revelation, Chicago is only beginning to recognize the inherent problems with privatizations. According to the Times, Alderman Scott Waguespack introduced a measure that would require an "independent third-party valuation" of major asset lease proposals before any future privatization deal is completed. The legislation would require "a comparison of public retention and private leasing over the life cycle of the agreement." This could serve as an important safeguard, but so far, the measure only has 12 co-sponsors among the council's 49 other members.

Photo: carbonmotion

"What I find is that people at first are very upset about the notion of paying evenings and Sundays," said Nolan, explaining that the majority of emails he has received from the public have been negative. "The real question is what are we going to do about Muni? It is so important for this city. When it's put in that context, people understand the problem [and understand] the alternative could be much worse."

MTA apokesperson Judson True said the agency has conducted 11 outreach meetings with various "groups" since the October 20th MTA Board presentation, including meetings in Supervisor Michaela Alioto-Pier's 2nd District and Supervisor Sean Elsbernd's 7th District, both considered to be more hostile to the proposal. When asked how many people the MTA has met with in these meetings, True would not specify that. When asked whether the number was 20 or 2,000, True said, "Somewhere between the two."

"We continue to attend community meetings and talk about the study and proposal," said True. "We continue to hear the same sorts of responses as we did at the board. We don't have a schedule to bring this issue before the board."

When asked whether the MTA has been pressured by the Mayor's Office to kill the study, True said, "The same skepticism about the proposal that existed when this came out, exists now."

Despite a proposal by the Chamber of Commerce to coordinate a comprehensive outreach meeting of its membership, the MTA has yet to take up the offer, according the the Chamber's Senior Vice President for Public Policy, Jim Lazarus.

The decision over extending meter hours will likely come down to MTA Chair Nolan and his resolve for confronting an issue the mayor who appointed him clearly disdains. Nolan said he wasn't concerned about the political reaction if he betrayed Mayor Newsom's wishes and said, "We're all in fixed terms over there; we can't be removed, except by cause."

This resolve clearly flies in the face of concerns Nolan conveyed to Streetsblog in an interview in July, when he admitted he worries about angering Newsom and what effect that would have on his ability to maintain good graces for his non-profit, Project Open Hand. Newsom has also summarily requested resignations of board members who disagree with him in the past, as happened to SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum nearly two years ago.

Whether Nolan will risk the political fallout is uncertain, though he acknowledged that the public is growing increasingly upset as it understands the scope of the Muni service cuts that go into effect December 5th. Those cuts, along with service enhancements meant to negate the impact, were negotiated in May in a budget deal between Mayor Newsom and Board of Supervisors Chair David Chiu that prevented Chiu from rejecting the MTA budget. Neither Chiu nor the Mayor seem to want to embrace a parking proposal they see as toxic.

That leaves Nolan holding the bag and compels him to make the unenviable choice between balancing the budget with the help of increased meter revenue (and the attendant political backlash) or balancing it with more service cuts and fare increases.

"People are just beginning to realize what [service cuts] mean to them," said Nolan. "It would be nice to make everybody happy, but my job is to do everything to make the system work for the vast majority of people."

Photo: Matthew Roth

And who should they hang for granting variances permitting higher than 2:1 ratios, as happened last week when a two-unit home at 2626 Larkin Street in Russian Hill received permission from the San Francisco Planning Commission to build five parking spaces, one with a parking stacker for additional cars?

When these questions are asked of city planners and developers, like they were during the struggle to limit parking at 299 Valencia Street, advocates and political leaders are led to believe that it is impossible to finance new developments, particularly condos and non-rental properties, without the maximum parking ratio possible. Less parking, goes the developer refrain, banks will refuse to loan and the units will be impossible to re-sell.

Not all developers buy that argument, however, and some have buildings that disprove it.

"If you are doing a project next to BART or many buses, you really don't need to have a lot of cars," said Oz Erickson, Chairman of the Emerald Fund, Inc, a developer who has built more than 2,000 units in San Francisco. Emerald's newest development, a rental building at 333 Harrison Street in Rincon Hill, will be built with a .5:1 parking-to-unit ratio, even though the developer could appeal for a variance to build more parking.

Above all else, Erickson argued, a city should provide as much flexibility in developments as possible. "You really should be in a position where zoning laws do not require you to put in parking," he said.

Patrick Kennedy's Gaia Building in Berkeley has 91 units and only 35 parking spaces. Photo: jeremydw

Referring to cyclists and others who don't own cars: "I think it's important to provide them with an opportunity to live a car-free life if they choose to."

Photo: jennifer jeffrey

Elliot Wagner, owner of Dimitra's Skincare and MediSpa in West Portal, said, "If you add in the consistent increasing in meter rates plus the vigorous enforcement, the outcome is simply that you will be driving people to Stonestown, which is next door, and there's ample parking, all free, and they'll never, never get a $53 ticket. The $2-3 per hour cost in parking meters is in fact a de facto 2-3 percent parking tax that we add onto every shopping bill."

Ken Cleaveland of the Building Owners and Management Association (BOMA) argued that the study was not "in-depth enough," and said, "At this time I don't think it's the right thing to do, certainly not for our local economy.  Most of the residents and businesses really are not prepared to pay more for parking." He said the city needs to build a lot more off-street parking garages and requested the MTA conduct a thorough cost-benefit impact analysis in every commercial zone where they proposed extending meters before they extend the meters.

Jim Lazarus of the Chamber of Commerce, who committed to convene "all the merchants and neighborhood groups in the city, bring them together with your staff, day after day, to work this out," had a very dim view of the study. He also highlighted a trend on streets like Clement in the Richmond, where residents park in metered spaces after the meters are turned off:

On Clement, where you have residents above commercial, those parking places at nighttime on Clement are used by the residents as well. You're taxing residents, potentially hundreds of dollars a year for that resident without off-street parking that comes home at 5:30 or quarter to 6 and has to park at that meter. You're going to tax that person until 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock at night to park at that meter. That doesn't work in this city…. You cannot kill our commercial districts. You cannot pit merchants against residents and residents against merchants. 

Forest Schmidt of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition testifying to the MTA Board. Photo: Michael Rhodes

Forest Schmidt, representing A.N.S.W.E.R., said in his testimony:

When people receive tickets from an expired meter, they're treated like they've committed a criminal offense.  The reality is that there are not enough parking spaces in the city.  It is a tax that is disproportionately put on the poor, the working class and small business owners. The reality is that… it comes out of their rent, their bills, the money they have for food. The working class population in San Francisco is being driven out.  I hope that this is the straw that breaks the camel's back, because people are having their cars stolen from them because of this random taxation. If you make $15,000 a year, if you only get one $50 ticket a month, it's a 4 percent income tax. This is ridiculous, it's out of control.

Never mind that car ownership and poverty rarely go hand in hand, especially in San Francisco, or that a person making $15,000 each year would be paying more than half of their salary for the upkeep of their car (car ownership costs on average $8,758 on average per year). Never mind that the 700,000 daily Muni passengers, demographically much closer to working poor, will be forced to bear another round of fare increases should the MTA Board fail to find creative sources of revenue, such as the parking study.

CC Puede's Fran Taylor pounced on the dubious claim that free parking is social justice, asking rhetorically: "I wonder if the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition is as embarrassed to be in bed with the landlords as the Chamber of Commerce is to be in bed with the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition.  Where were these people in 2005 when Muni fares went up? Where were they in 2009 when they went up again…? The crocodile tears I hear for the working class? The real working class, the real poor, they're on the bus."

And this from Tom Radulovich, Executive Director of Livable City, "These parking spaces weren't here when the Spaniards arrived, they were built by somebody, they're maintained at some cost, and the notion that they are free in a city that is very short of real estate and space and somehow it's about human rights in the constitution that we should have these parking spaces available to everyone--well, no.... I'd rather live in a city where we paid for parking and transit was free."

Bob Planthold of the Senior Action Network reminded the MTA Board that they have a duty to find revenue to better fund paratransit and to enforce parking violations such as parking on sidewalks. "You've had the opportunity as an MTA Board from the very beginning to put funding measures on the ballot. This is a potential internal funding measure that can help paratransit and better enforcement. You can do something by principle, or you can cave in to political whims and pressure."

In the end, MTA Chief Nat Ford told his Board he would prepare a schedule of public outreach meetings and the agency would take the proposal throughout the city to get public opinion on it. MTA Board Director Malcolm Heinicke urged Ford to heed the advice of several speakers to set up a one-year trial of extended meters in a commercial district where that might not be too controversial and gather data based on the experiment.  Ford said he would direct staff to do so.

MTA Board Chairman Tom Nolan reminded his board that MTA staff presented them with three service cuts options for balancing the budget, each more "draconian" than the last. The board chose the middle option with the understanding they would have to come back and find more revenue or face service cuts. "I think about that, what it means if we don't find additional revenues for this agency. The last thing that I'd like to do on this board is cut any additional service. To my mind we're here to provide service."

So then it comes to whether or not the MTA Board has the fortitude to back an unpopular parking proposal to fulfill its Transit-First mandate. If it's true that Mayor Newsom is washing his hands of the study and leaving it to the MTA Board and the Supes, this small paean to rational parking policy proffered by MTA staff might not be dead yet. 

Chu's opinion, as stated in the email: "I believe that the MTA must be more surgical in their approach. Not only should the MTA take a look at circulation/congestion on a neighborhood by neighborhood level, but they must also take a look and assess how the economy has impacted different areas before implementing any changes."

I don't know if the MTA's proposal could have been more surgical in Chu's district, where the agency proposed extending meter hours on limited commercial streets such as Taraval, Noriega, and Irving (click here for the map). On Noriega, for instance, extended metering would only occur on three blocks near 19th Avenue and a few more near Sunset. This is a far cry from the blanket 8 pm extension that had been proposed originally in the MTA budget compromise in May and is certainly better than the Oakland situation.

We've also heard that Chinatown merchants will be out in force at the meeting to oppose any changes and will request an explanation of the methodology behind the MTA's study in their area.

Though Livable City tells us they are trying to organize merchants from a couple of the commercial districts in the study area, it's possible the meeting is going to be swamped with angry business owners who fear the effects of increased meter hours, even if it would make it easier for their customers to park nearby.

San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors meeting is today at 2 p.m. San Francisco City Hall, room 400. The parking study presentation is item 14 on the agenda. The meeting will be broadcast online on SFGTV2.  Here's more info on who to contact to voice your support for the parking study. You can also send feedback to extendedhours@sfmta.com.

Read the complete Chu email after the jump.

True wouldn't elaborate on why the budget item had been removed from today's agenda, despite repeated requests for an explanation. He offered only vagaries: "We continue to have ongoing financial problems. We're still crunching numbers and there are a lot of conversations being had."

When asked if the MTA was getting pressure from Mayor Gavin Newsom not to present the budget deficit item because of Newsom's opposition to extending meter hours, True responded, "not to my knowledge." He added, "The mayor is making public statements and we're listening to that, just as we're listening to the Board of Supervisors and the public."

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu's office was more candid. "We stand in the same frustrated place we did about a month ago," said Chiu's spokesperson, David Noyola. "Everybody knows there's a problem; there are no appetizing solutions. It's either figure out a place to find revenue or find a way to reduce expenditure and cost."

On the issue of mayoral pressure on the MTA, Noyola said, "You have an executive branch that is understandably sheepish about the reaction [to the parking study] and they have publicly said they're opposed." He said he would not speculate whether Newsom's office was pressuring the MTA behind the scenes.

Livable City Executive Director and BART Board Director Tom Radulovich said BART was moving to address its $20 million projected deficit proactively, before it becomes a bigger problem, and so should the MTA. "If MTA is running a big budget deficit, they absolutely should be talking about it. If they're running a budget deficit and projecting a shortfall the following year, then not talking about [it] will intensify the problem the following year."

Radulovich also said he had no confidence that Newsom would do what's needed to keep Muni from suffering more service cuts. "Will the Mayor let Muni go down the tubes? I think the answer is probably yes. He hasn't shown any initiative raising money for the MTA. [Proposition E, which merged the Department of Parking and Traffic with Muni in 1999] says he shall 'diligently seek new revenue sources for Muni.' In terms of him diligently seeking new revenue sources, I haven't seen it."

Noyola suggested that a conversation about extending parking meters should happen, particularly because the MTA completed its parking study with due diligence. "We considered parking meters in a vacuum, now we need to hear it in context. One of the ways to force the issue is to have a public hearing."

Noyola said his office is considering holding a hearing to shed light on the MTA's budget situation, a solution Supervisor John Avalos committed to do if Chiu did not. In an interview with Streetsblog last week, Avalos said, "They have a growing budget deficit that they need to move on. Any inaction is going to see that deficit continue to grow." He added that he would hold the MTA accountable in the same way he did in May when the budget issue was last debated.

Radulovich suggested that the problem is endemic of the formative structure of the MTA and might not be resolved without a fundamental restructuring of the agency, something Livable City supported in 2007 with Proposition A. He suggested San Francisco should seriously consider how well the agency is serving the city and whether or not its charter needs another revision.

"The lack of accountability is a real structural problem," he said. "When the MTA does something that could cause acute political pain, the answer is always 'don't do it.' On the other hand, when the MTA runs down, it doesn't stick to anyone.  There's this political distancing that goes on, especially from the Mayor's office." 

"MTA's 10th Anniversary is this November," he added. "I think it's a good time to look at what's working and what's not working."

San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors meeting is today at 2 p.m. San Francisco City Hall, room 400. The parking study presentation is item 14 on the agenda. The meeting will be broadcast online on SFGTV2.  Here's more info on who to contact to voice your support for the parking study. You can also send feedback to extendedhours@sfmta.com.