Note: The discussion on the Fell and Oak bikeways begins at about 11:05.

Mayor Ed Lee and SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin (a.k.a. “the Eds”) faced questions about the city’s extensive delivery time on the Fell and Oak bikeway project at Google’s recent “Fireside Chat” forum. A questioner asked why the project is coming in 2013 rather than this year (though, as of last week, staff has moved the timeline up a few months to next winter).

Reiskin repeated the SFMTA’s assertion that it’s not a “delay” at all, and claimed that complaints about losing car parking are important enough to prolong safe bicycle access for the public. As for the mayor, he said he would “bring leadership” to the project and mentioned that he’d rode on the route in a caravan of public officials before pointing to progress on the long-awaited JFK Drive Bikeway (which, as of last weekend, still hadn’t started construction despite promises of starting in January).

Technically, the SFMTA is correct that Fell and Oak’s official delivery date was originally set for the fall of 2013 in project funding documents [PDF] approved last summer. But its public relations staff hadn’t openly announced that fact at public meetings or elsewhere, and expectations were still mostly set on this year based on the originally proposed date for a trial in June 2012, which Mayor Lee told Streetsblog a year ago he wanted to implement “quickly.”

When staff told Streetsblog recently that implementation would wait until some time in 2013, it was, by and large, news to most people who’ve been following the project. The main reason for the delay (what else to call it — a “timeline change”?) cited by the SFMTA is its decision to abandon what would have been an efficiently-delivered trial project in order to create a more permanent project that tries to appease pushback from car owners over 80 parking spots (despite the roughly 120 overnight paid spaces opened at an adjacent lot last May).

“We had been talking about trying to pilot something sooner, but we have run into a pretty significant amount of opposition in the directly impacted neighborhood… and we don’t want to steamroll over folks,” said Reiskin. “We’re taking the time to try to find ways in which we can mitigate the parking loss.”

Good public process and outreach are key in turning out the best project possible. But that’s not the same as letting the terms of public safety improvements be dictated by those who want to keep on receiving precious public space to store their private automobiles for free — a status quo bias which has “steamrolled” nearly everything else on the city’s streets for most of the past century.

H/T Streetsblog commenter Mike Sonn for the video.

Photo: Frank Chan/Flickr

What would happen if, one day, the city decided to make better use of the car parking on a commercial corridor like Stockton Street in Chinatown?

“What about the businesses?” opponents might exclaim. “Where would their customers park?”

The myth of the urban driving shoppers was debunked again over the past week or so, when community leaders in Chinatown repurposed parking lanes on the most crowded blocks of Stockton to make more room for merchants and shoppers during the busy Lunar New Year season. If the still-overcrowded sidewalks were any indication, the parking didn’t seem to be missed.

“If anything, we’ve benefited from it,” said Brian Kan of Pacific Seafood Trading Company, who was selling groceries from a stand off the curb like many other merchants. “We think it’s brought us a lot of business, actually, instead of losing business. And it’s a great way for us to interact with the people walking around, too.”

While giving public parking spaces to private businesses may not necessarily achieve the same goals sought by public space expansions like parklets and plazas, the experiment highlighted the competing demands for street space in the densest neighborhood west of the Mississippi. In Chinatown, a disproportionate amount of real estate is devoted to moving and storing cars despite having the city’s lowest car ownership rate of 17 percent. According to a Department of Public Works press release, a study by the SFMTA estimated the corridor sees about 2,000 pedestrians per hour — and that’s on an average day.

The temporary transfer of space was a coordinated effort between Chinatown neighborhood and merchant associations, the mayor’s office, and a slew of city departments “to enhance and improve the experience in Chinatown during this peak holiday time,” said D3 Supervisor David Chiu in a statement. “Chinese New Year is celebrated by thousands and we want to provide an environment that supports the small business community and improves pedestrian flow along Stockton and connecting streets. We are creating a public space that meets the growing needs of this community and beyond.”

Cindy Wu of the Chinatown Community Development Center said that drawing shoppers to linger on already congested sidewalks didn’t necessarily help the crowding problem, but she believes the street needs some changes. She wants to explore how to allocate more space on Stockton for merchants and pedestrians in a way that is most beneficial to the neighborhood.

“There are so many competing uses of the street, and parking plays a role in that,” said Wu, “but we need to figure out, for however many feet from storefront to storefront — Stockton Street is wide — what is the use that benefits the most people at one time, or what is the right balance of use?”

See more photos after the break.

Photo: Frank Chan/Flickr

Photo: Aaron Bialick

Photo: Aaron Bialick

"No door zone." Photo: Frank Chan/Flickr

Image: SFPark

The SFPark program’s Mission Bay Parking Management Strategy is “meant to address the existing severe parking availability issues and to get ready for the future,” said SFPark Manager Jay Primus, who sat in on a three-hour hearing on the plan at City Hall today. “These are neighborhoods where we’re going to see the majority of the city’s growth in the years to come.”

The plan was approved for recommendation to the SFMTA Board of Directors, save for a few blocks which the hearing officers recommended for re-evaluation.

Included in the plan’s Mission Bay “Parkingshed” area are existing and planned developments that are drawing more and more commuters, including the University of California San Francisco, AT&T Park, and Caltrain stations at 22nd and Fourth Streets. It also encompasses impacted “buffer areas” like the Dogpatch and Potrero Hill neighborhoods, and SFPark expansions are also planned in the Mission around a park that’s set to replace a parking lot at 17th and Folsom Streets.

But among the complaints, residents defended subsidized free parking, claiming meters would impose an undue burden on drivers in areas with poor access to transit and more residential and industrial uses than retail.

“No doubt these are complex neighborhoods,” said Primus, “but they’re predominantly commercial, mixed-use PDR [production, distribution and repair] areas. That doesn’t mean that MTA should leave this parking utterly unmanaged. This is parking that is close to BART, Third Street light rail, and that businesses depend on for their economic vitality.”

But even some supporters of SFPark, like Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association President Tony Kelley, criticized the SFMTA for a lack of outreach to neighbors.

“We do not have space for everybody in their car to drive to work, so we need parking management,” said Kelley, “but for god’s sake, if you’ve got 2,000 people in the neighborhood saying you haven’t talked to us, then maybe you need to talk to us.”

Primus defended the outreach efforts, saying staff does its best “to engage with every individual.”

“We’ve reached out to every large group we could in these areas,” said Primus. “It’s impossible to reach everyone. Judging by the meeting today, clearly, the word has gotten out there, and that’s great. This is part of a healthy process for SFMTA.”

“Sometimes you feel like you could send an engraved invitation and people would still say they’ve never heard about it,” said Cheryl Brinkman, a member of the SFMTA Board of Directors. She pointed out that even though flyers were put on every door in the outreach for the Masonic Avenue redesign project, some still complained it wasn’t enough.

“I think as city dwellers, we sometimes underestimate what people are willing to do for free parking,” she added.

Among the organizations supporting the plan are Livable City and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, who sent letters to the SFMTA this week encouraging staff to move it forward.

“The expansion of metered spaces will provide the parking turnover that neighborhood-serving businesses need,” wrote Livable City Executive Director Tom Radulovich in his letter. “SFPark metering and pricing will also reduce cruising for parking in these neighborhoods. Cruising for parking generates traffic which delays Muni, produces greenhouse gas emissions, and distracted drivers making multiple turns endanger pedestrians and cyclists in these increasingly pedestrian- and cycling-oriented neighborhoods.”

But ending the subsidy of free parking rarely comes without a fight, and opponents seemed geared up to return when the plan goes before the SFMTA Board of Directors for final approval in February. Contrary to the doomsday predictions of critics, Primus warned that the plan’s approval will be crucial to the success of those neighborhoods.

“Mismanaging parking in this area is going to hold back the economic growth and vitality in the city,” said Primus, “and that would be a shame.”

We will be off for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Have a great weekend, and we will see you back here on Tuesday.

A rendering of CPMC's proposed 555-bed hospital and medical office building at Van Ness and Geary. Image: Rebuild CPMC

Nearly 10,000 additional cars [PDF] are predicted to travel every day to the gigantic Cathedral Hill California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) at Van Ness and Geary after it opens in 2016. While the city is negotiating how much the institution will pay to help mitigate the impacts those cars will have on Muni and pedestrian and bicycle safety, some advocates argue that won’t make up for a fundamental flaw: The medical center will include too much parking.

The 555-bed hospital and medical office building will include more than 1,200 parking spaces. CPMC projects half the visitors and employees to come by transit, foot or bike. But based on CPMC’s track record at three of its existing sites in the city, Marlayne Morgan of the Cathedral Hill Neighborhood Association doesn’t think that’s likely.

CPMC’s transit incentives for employees aren’t enough, says Morgan. “Even with giving $100 to take public transit, they can’t get 50 percent of their employees out of their cars,” she told the SF Board of Supervisors at a four-hour hearing last week on the transparency of CPMC’s negotiations with the city. “There’s no way to mitigate the impact of this facility unless you take it down in size.”

Cathedral Hill’s staff will be comprised largely of current CPMC employees at its other San Francisco locations, just under half of whom live outside the city, according to the transportation analysis in the CPMC’s Institutional Master Plan [PDF].

“They’re taking three hospitals and putting them in one location,” said Morgan. “It’s hard to believe that this is going to change the patterns at Cathedral Hill.”

Trip mode share at three existing CPMC campuses, from the Institutional Master Plan PDF

CPMC spokesperson Kevin McCormack said employees can get “up to $230 a month in pre-taxed pay to buy commuter checks for use on all Bay Area mass transit from MUNI and BART to Caltrain and van pools,” seemingly a reference to federal tax benefits that also provide incentives for employees to drive to work. (In fact, as of January 1, 2012, the maximum monthly pre-tax benefit for parking will be $240, while the maximum benefit for transit will drop back down to $125.)

“We also have shuttles that run between campuses and to and from Muni and BART stations so staff don’t have to bring their cars into the city or into downtown,” McCormack added. He couldn’t provide information on the parking benefits CPMC offers.

Ultimately, to reduce traffic generated by a specific facility, sustainable transportation advocates say that planners must reduce the amount of parking. “Parking spaces – particularly commuter or visitor spaces – are like magnets for cars,” writes Jeffrey Tumlin, a principal at San Francisco-based Nelson/Nygaard Associates, in his upcoming book Sustainable Transportation Planning.

The Cathedral Hill center would be more transit-accessible than the existing CPMC sites. Its location at the intersection of two BRT lines set to open on Van Ness and Geary in 2016 could lure more employees to take transit. But that also makes the high volume of parking all the more superfluous and the traffic generated all the more harmful to transit performance. As Livable City Director Tom Radulovich told Streetsblog last year, “If you’re going to maximize damage to Muni’s network, that’s where you would do it.”

While no bicycle improvements have been promised, CPMC could help fund an SFMTA study under the agreement being negotiated with the city. But unless protected bikeways are added to streets like Post, Sutter, and Polk, few commuters are expected to bike to the center.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which is pushing for a protected bikeway on Polk Street in its Connecting the City campaign, said in a statement that it “is looking to the CPMC Cathedral Hill to really embrace bicycle transportation for its staff and visitors. Supporting the creation of a top-notch bikeway on Polk Street will benefit the hospital, the neighborhood and countless destinations and people throughout the city.”

The Cathedral Hill center is set to begin construction next year and open in 2016.

Primus speaking with SFMTA Sustainable Streets Director Bond Yee at the installation of SFPark meters in March. Photo: SFMTA/Flickr

Primus got in touch yesterday when the Streetsblog Network highlighted a blog post from Michael Perkins at Greater Greater Washington which claimed that the results of the experiment, which began in April, are showing that “prices affect parking less than San Francisco expected.”

“To date,” wrote Perkins, “the most crowded blocks have typically continued to be crowded even after adjusting the prices upward, while under-occupied blocks have not filled up even after dropping the price.”

Primus responded in the comments and spoke with Streetsblog to address points raised by Perkins and other readers. “The ‘expectations’ that Michael wrote of are his own,” Primus said. It’s also worth pointing out that Perkins’ post didn’t include any specific data or sources that support his assertion.

“SFMTA has taken a very empirical approach with SFPark,” said Primus, “and this is a demonstration project that is just getting started, so it’s a little early to say how well it’s working, especially without proper analysis and evaluation.”

See the full statement from Primus after the break:

It is premature to make conclusions about the effectiveness of demand-responsive pricing for parking. Before evaluating its effectiveness, people need time to become aware of rate differences between blocks, time of day, and/or between on- and off-street alternatives (as we have largely lowered rates in garages). These changes do not happen overnight.

Several people have commented that, essentially, “demand-responsive pricing at meters won’t work because drivers will not know prices at different meters or garages”. We disagree.  Not everyone needs to know about the differences in parking rates. To create more parking availability, we only need a few people to know about rate changes and choose to park somewhere else.

Who knows about the differences in parking rates? At least some people, whether because they use an app to see rates (as well as availability), park so frequently in the same area that they are “experts” that end up noticing rate differences, or because people will generally start to realize that it now costs less to park in garages than on-street. It is still very early days and it takes time to learn and adjust.

When evaluating the effects of parking pricing on parking demand, it is also important to recognize that parking demand is not constant. Many factors besides price influence parking demand, including seasonal variations (e.g., summer vs. fall), employment levels, and fuel prices. SFpark is a demonstration project, and we are gathering data that will enable a rigorous evaluation to better understand how price, as well as other factors, influence demand for parking. After a longer period (say, 18-24 months) of demand-responsive rate changes, we will all be in a better position to rigorously evaluate how demand-responsive pricing delivers benefits and changes parking, or travel, behavior.

Photo: Jun Seita/Flickr

Year after year, the champions of free car parking come to defend its sanctity when the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) works up the guts to raise the issue in its search for budget solutions.

As surely as drivers will cruise endlessly for coveted free parking spots every Sunday, opponents like San Francisco Examiner’s Ken Garcia will attempt to stifle calls for the expansion of metered parking hours.

Unfortunately, public discourse on the issue is repeatedly timed with the SFMTA’s budget deadline, helping to feed the widespread misconception that pricing parking is nothing more than a money grab and obscuring its potential as a sorely overdue solution for rationalizing the use of our streets.

In his column yesterday, Garcia called for squashing once and for all the “tired” practice of using cars as “roving cash machines.”

Nevermind that San Francisco is already resorting to general fund bonds to pave the streets in lieu of payments from the motor vehicle owners who wear them down. To Garcia, putting a rational price on parking spaces is “a kind of ‘gouge and go’ philosophy to get city transportation planners off the hook for their bosses’ inability to run their own department efficiently.” Unfortunately, Mayor Ed Lee went along with Garcia’s rant.

To be sure, there are many steps the SFMTA could take to be more efficient, but the question of how to price parking isn’t necessarily about the budget. It’s about fixing an outdated system of wasteful giveaways that ultimately benefit no one – not even drivers.

As Streetsblog has written extensively, when parking is underpriced, we all pick up the tab. On Sundays and weeknights after 6 p.m., free parking throughout the city means drivers have no incentive to limit their stay during high-demand periods and busy commercial districts are inundated with car traffic as drivers circle for parking.

The costs add up, with as much as 30 percent of downtown drivers in some cities on the hunt for a place to leave their car.

We’ve all come to expect to pay the market-rate price for a scarce resource, whether it’s a movie ticket on a Friday night or an apartment in San Francisco. Why should the consumption of 140 square feet of public space to store an automobile be any different?

Of course, rather than paying in cash, drivers pay for “free” parking by queuing up. The problem is, they make others pay too. You can see the true cost of free parking every Sunday in my neighborhood, the Inner Sunset. Frustrated drivers make endless loops around the same blocks. Many give up and double park on streets like Irving, forcing bicycle riders onto the streetcar tracks and often blocking the N-Judah until the operator blares the horn at them.

That’s the dysfunction that Garcia wants to perpetuate. Meanwhile, a better system is right under his nose. The SFPark program’s innovative strides toward pricing parking accurately have been widely lauded in this city and across the country.

Even Mayor Lee touted the rationale for parking pricing at SFPark’s launch in April: “You know, when you’re driving around looking for a parking space and you’re double parking and you’re running around trying to see whether something will open, you’re dumb.”

“We want to be less dumb about this,” said Lee.

But now, Lee appears to be abandoning intelligent policy and playing it safe like his predecessor. He told Garcia that raising more parking revenue, including updating meter hours, is “an old, re-hashed idea” and that we need a better, “long-term solution.”

Lee’s assertion that adjusting meter hours is an old idea is absolutely correct. San Francisco’s parking meter hours basically haven’t been updated since they were first installed in 1947 to encourage turnover during business hours.

Many things have changed since then — like business hours.

But as long as city leaders keep playing to the misguided attacks of those like Garcia, San Francisco will remain behind the times.

Damien Newton: Los Angeles is changing the way it does parking in its downtown. They’re calling it the ExpressPark system. Let’s start with the basics — what is the program and what are your thoughts?

Donald Shoup: For the first time they’re stating how they’re going to set parking prices. Instead of basing it on council decisions or emotions or people’s feelings, they stated a principal. Parking at a meter will be at the lowest price they can charge and still have one or two open spaces on every block.

If they get that price right, then those spaces will be well used because almost all the spaces will be full. Yet there will be spaces readily available because one or two spaces will be open.

Can it get any better than that as a goal for the parking system?

The key is, can you set the right price without looking at the results even though the results are what’s going to count when setting the price.

DN: This marks a shift in policy for the city that seemed to base parking decisions based on what brings in the most revenue.

DS: It hadn’t been about that even, until quite recently.

You may remember a few years ago they doubled the price of parking everywhere in the city with a minimum price of a dollar an hour. Since most meters were at a quarter an hour, that meant quadrupling the price at most meters. That was the first time meter prices had been changed in eighteen years.

There’s been a lot of neglect of parking meters. Inertia seemed to be the main factor in determining parking prices.

They’re changing that by saying, “Here’s the rule. If half the spaces on a block are empty, we’re going to lower prices. If all the spaces are full we’re going to raise prices.” Since the price change two years ago, I’ve seen entire blocks where there isn’t one car parked. The price is too high.

I think a lot of prices would go down if they extend express park to the whole city. They’re starting in downtown, but I suspect that some prices will go down.

DN: One of the tenets of “The High Cost of Free Parking” is that money collected from meters should be returned to the communities where it was collected. L.A.’s plan returns all metered funds to the general fund. Is that a mistake by the city? Does it give you any misgivings about the plan altogether?

DS: That’s what they’re planning in L.A., they’re not planning on funneling any of the money back to the neighborhood?

That’s a mistake. When you funnel back to the neighborhood you get local buy-in and you get wonderful results.

Pasadena returns all of the metered money back into the neighborhood for decades and they turned the local neighborhood that used to be a commercial skid row into one of the most popular shopping destinations in Southern California. The meters brought in an extra million dollars a year in public services in just that little shopping district. They replaced all the sidewalks, streetlights and street furniture. They cleaned up the allays. They put electric wires underground. This was all paid for by meters.

But that’s a political issue. I think that getting the price right is also very important.

]]> http://la.streetsblog.org/2011/08/24/interview-with-donald-shoup-los-angeles-making-strides-with-expresspark/feed/ 0 http://sf.streetsblog.org/2011/07/26/sfmta-to-test-on-street-car-share-parking-spaces/ http://sf.streetsblog.org/2011/07/26/sfmta-to-test-on-street-car-share-parking-spaces/#comments Tue, 26 Jul 2011 22:08:11 +0000 Aaron Bialick http://sf.streetsblog.org/?p=271565 [...]]]>

On-street car share pods in Portland, Oregon. Flickr photo: sfcityscape

Car share members in San Francisco could soon be picking up their vehicles from exclusive curbside parking spaces. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is launching a pilot program in mid-August to test at least ten on-street car share “pods” as part of its SFPark program.

“On-street car sharing pods (i.e., locations where users can pick up a car sharing vehicle) can encourage car sharing by increasing the visibility of car sharing, improving the proximity to trip origins, and increasing the total number of pods,” says an SFMTA document [pdf] on the pilot.

The pilot is a partnership between the SFMTA, the non-profit City CarShare, and the City Administrator’s Office and will include at least five confirmed pods on Polk and Greenwich, Taylor and Pacific, Harriet and Folsom, Valencia and 17th, and Clay and Fillmore.

If it proves successful, SFMTA CFO Sonali Bose said on-street car share spaces could be expanded citywide and rented by any car share company that fits the agency’s criteria.

The SFMTA says it plans to mark the spaces with paint and signage paid for by City CarShare, which would rent the spots for $150 per month and be responsible for maintenance.

The SF Board of Supervisors approved an amendment to the Transportation Code today that prohibits unpermitted vehicles from parking in on-street car share spaces. The SFMTA plans to produce stickers to mark permitted car share vehicles, the SFMTA document says.

All but one of the six originally proposed spots were approved at a public hearing on July 1 after neighbors voiced complaints about a spot to be located at Union and Hyde Streets. SFMTA staff said they would come back with an alternate proposal for the location, but the SFMTA Board of Directors is expected to green light the other spots in the coming weeks.

Bose said that five more locations, including the Glen Park and Dogpatch neighborhoods, are being developed after D10 Supervisor Malia Cohen voiced frustration that the southeast area wasn’t included during yesterday’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee meeting. City Administrator’s Office Fleet Manager Tom Fung said the spots were chosen based on criteria which included data on membership demand from City CarShare.

City CarShare, which aims to reduce automobile dependency and ownership, currently provides its members hourly usage of vehicles stored in hundreds of off-street pods throughout the Bay Area, located primarily in private parking lots.

In 2004, former Mayor Gavin Newsom opened several on-street “showcase” car share pods in front of City Hall, but they have been limited to that location.

Bose said that over the six-month pilot period, the SFMTA will evaluate pod usage, user satisfaction, and best practices before expanding to other locations.

Flickr photo: omega wolff

The hundreds of tour buses that roam San Francisco’s streets would be managed under the SF Park program as part of a proposal introduced today by Board of Supervisors President David Chiu and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA).

“As one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, tour buses often congest San Francisco’s streets,” said an SFMTA press release. “The passenger loading zones are crowded and some buses stay longer than necessary, encouraging other tour buses to double-park or use Muni stops. Also, with few places to park while their customers visit destinations, some buses end up circling city streets for hours.”

The plan would utilize several strategies based on SFPark’s parking management principles:

• Creating additional and more efficient tour bus passenger loading areas
• Improving passenger loading area time limit enforcement
• Providing metered on-street tour bus parking spaces where tour buses can wait while customers patronize a tourist area
• Helping to create overnight tour bus parking areas
• Potentially developing a permit system for tour buses to better manage and enforce tour bus parking and loading.

“Making it easier for tour buses to load, unload and park will help tour buses make an even greater contribution to San Francisco’s economy, while reducing impacts for residents,” said Chiu, who introduced the legislation at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting. “Tourists will access their destinations quickly, and everyone will benefit from safer, less congested streets.”

The SFMTA said it will also partner with the SF Police Department “to educate tour bus operators on restricted streets to prevent congestion in our neighborhoods” at the request of D2 Supervisor Mark Farrell.

“I’m pleased the SFMTA is focusing on a program to better manage the tour bus industry in our city,” Farrell said in a statement. “We also need to inform tour bus companies that they are prohibited from driving on certain streets and work with the SFPD to enforce those restrictions.”

The plan was developed “in partnership with tour bus operators, the Port of San Francisco, the Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefit District, Supervisor David Chiu’s office and other stakeholders,” the SFMTA said.

The plan would first be implemented in Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39 and Union Square, the agency said.

The current Cala Foods on Hyde Street is fronted by a parking lot. Photo: Bryan Goebel

Trader Joe’s announced last week that it is moving into a new location on Nob Hill, at the southwest corner of California and Hyde streets, where the lease for Cala Foods expires in late December. It’s a dense, transit-rich neighborhood that sits along the California cable car line. Given the popularity of TJ’s four other San Francisco locations, which cater largely to motoring shoppers, will it bring more cars and congestion to the neighborhood?

“The plan is to keep the parking configured exactly as it is right now. There will be about 80 spaces total after we’ve re-striped the garage and complete the work,” said Dan Safier, the president of the Prado Group, the developer. “Plus, you have a lot of people who live in the area who just don’t live with cars, so shoppers will be using public transportation or arriving on foot.”

Trader Joe’s recently abandoned plans for a Castro location because neighborhood groups courageously pushed for no parking. The chain ultimately pulled out, according to Supervisor Scott Wiener, because “the location was not going to work for its business model, one that is fairly reliant on automobile visits.”

Safier said Trader Joe’s plans to occupy a little over half of the 25,000 square foot building on Hyde and will begin construction in early 2012. Because the change in tenancy doesn’t require a change of use, it doesn’t trigger a Planning Department review, similar to the process for the Whole Foods that recently replaced another Cala Foods location in the Haight. (Update: According to the SF Planning Department, because Trader Joe’s is formula retail, it will actually require a conditional use permit. It’s possible the Planning Department could require that Trader Joe’s take measures to prevent a vehicle queue and address pedestrian circulation at this location).

The traffic queue on Masonic Avenue. Photo: SF Citizen

It’s hard to tell what the demand for parking might be at TJ’s Nob Hill location, but the Planning Department has begun to require that large new stores prevent traffic queues like the long line of cars frequently spotted at TJ’s Masonic Avenue location.

For the planned Whole Foods/condo project at Market and Dolores streets, also being developed by the Prado Group, the Planning Department requires implicit measures “to ensure that vehicle queuing does not occur.” However, some advocates doubt that Whole Foods will be able to prevent a traffic queue without charging for parking to properly manage the supply, and are frustrated that there’s really no mechanism in place to enforce the measures.

“Right now the MTA (Municipal Transportation Agency) isn’t required to do planning code enforcement, nor is Planning empowered to do traffic enforcement, so it could very easily fall through the bureaucratic cracks,” said Tom Radulovich, the executive director of Livable City.

At TJ’s Nob Hill location, one concern about making it more attractive to people on foot is the parking lot that fronts the store. The entrance has a substantial setback from the sidewalk, notes resident Michael Jacinto, who lives nearby.

“You kind of have to dodge cars sometime,” said Jacinto. “I think there will be more cars than there are now.” He hopes, however, that the new store will lead some neighbors who might normally drive to the other TJ locations to walk instead.

The Yerba Buena parking garage. Flickr photo: mlinksva

As developers bring more residents and employees to the South of Market (SoMa) district, the number of parking lots and garages they build for automobiles will largely determine how much the new tenants and commuters will drive.

But even in a downtown area like SoMa, developers are bound by antiquated planning codes to provide a minimum number of off-street parking spots.

Transit advocates are looking to reverse those restrictions with a piece of legislation [pdf] approved by the SF Board of Supervisors Land Use and Economic Development Committee yesterday. The ordinance would shed the city’s planning code of car parking minimums in SoMa and replace them with parking maximums in some areas. It’s expected to be confirmed by the full Board of Supervisors in the next few weeks.

“This is the next step in comprehensive parking reform in San Francisco,” said Tom Radulovich, the executive director of Livable City, who drafted the legislation along with former D6 Supervisor Chris Daly when he was in office last year. Daly’s successor, Supervisor Jane Kim, took over the legislation as its sponsor.

Among a host of progressive parking reforms, the proposal would bring consistent maximums to the SoMa district, which planning ordinances passed over the years have set differently within individual sections. It would also prohibit office parking garages closest to the downtown job center from structuring parking prices in a way that lures driving commuters.

Other measures would provide a range of options for citywide developers and property owners to sidestep minimum car parking requirements that are still in place. New parking that would impact historic trees or buildings, seismic safety, a street’s character, and traffic may be exempt from the requirements. Tougher restrictions would also be put in place along designated pedestrian, bicycle, and transit corridors as well as in other dense neighborhoods like Chinatown.

Citywide parking minimums vary across different types of buildings. The default requirement for residential dwellings in areas where ordinances haven’t been put in place is one off-street parking spot per unit. Larger hotels are required to provide a spot for every 16 bedrooms, while motels need one for every room.

A rendering of CPMC's proposed 555-bed hospital on Van Ness Avenue as it would be seen from Franklin and Post.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has sent a proposal to California Pacific Medial Center (CPMC) officials requesting more than $108 million to help mitigate the impacts of a proposed 555-bed hospital and office building on Cathedral Hill in the heart of a rich transit district and congested area that will be the future crossing point of two bus rapid transit (BRT) lines.

The mayor’s proposal was first reported in the Chronicle this morning. It includes a request that CPMC contribute $73 million to the city’s affordable housing fund, provide $4.5 million for the loss of 20 single-room occupancy (SRO) units and 5 rent-controlled apartments, along with $18 million for pedestrian safety and streetscape improvements in the Tenderloin and Mission, and $10 million for both the Van Ness and Geary BRT projects.

“It’s certainly a good start,” said Tom Radulovich, the executive director of Livable City, who has been a critic of CPMC’s plans. “It’s great to see some projects in there that have long been priorities for the adjacent neighborhoods.”

As we’ve reported, transit advocates and a broad coalition of neighborhood and labor groups have raised serious concerns about CPMC’s long-range development plans for San Francisco, including new parking being proposed for the enormous facility that would be built on Van Ness Avenue, and the plan for St. Luke’s hospital in the Mission.

Advocates say the parking garages proposed for the Van Ness location (a total of 1200 spaces, 650 above current conditions) would have a detrimental impact on streets and neighborhoods in the area, including the Tenderloin. Radulovich and other advocates have criticized the Planning Department’s Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) and outdated EIR models that fail to consider how additional parking affects driving demand.

A copy of the Mayor’s demands [pdf] obtained by Streetsblog doesn’t go into great detail, but outlines some of the pedestrian safety and streetscape improvements that would benefit the Tenderloin, which has some of the highest rates of pedestrian fatalities and injuries in San Francisco.

The proposal includes:

• $3.5 million to fund the conversion from one-way to two-way traffic on Ellis and Eddy Streets between Leavenworth and Mason.
• $3 million to fund curb bulbs, crosswalk treatments and signal modifications at a number of intersections in the Tenderloin.
• $3 million to fund pedestrian lighting along several streets through the Tenderloin.
• $500,000 to fund a “Safe Passage Program” creating a designated safe walking route for children through the Tenderloin to BART.
• $1 million in capital funding for the establishment of a neighborhood CBD for the Lower Polk Neighborhood, and initial set of physical improvements “to be implemented by the CPD on an ongoing basis.”
• $1 million to fund streetscape-related improvements in the Lower Polk neighborhood.
• $7 million to fund a series of streetscape, pedestrian safety and lighting improvements in the immediate vicinity of St. Luke’s in the Mission.

Similar to requirements that were placed on the parking garage for the upcoming City Place development on Market Street, CPMC would remit to the SFMTA a .50 cent fee for each peak hour entry and exit, and a .25 cent fee for each off-peak entry and exit at its parking garages.

We had several questions for the Mayor’s Office about this proposal, but a phone call to Ken Rich of the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development was not immediately returned.

Will $18 million really be enough to mitigate the true impacts on transit, pedestrians and bicyclists?

What about some of the shelved proposals that were included in the San Francisco County Transportation Authority’s 2007 Tenderloin/Little Saigon report [pdf], including a recommendation to two-way Leavenworth and Jones Streets?

Why no money for bicycle improvements? A garage for the Van Ness facility would let out on Polk Street. Why not fund a protected bikeway on Polk Street? It’s a heavily traveled bike corridor (Route 25 on the bike map) that serves as a major north-south connection.

While many questions remain about the Mayor’s proposal, Radulovich said it was encouraging to see these kind of issues addressed at this point in the process.

“Mitigation measures like these being proposed by the Mayor’s Office before the project goes through the entitlements process, rather than being brokered after the fact as part of an EIR appeal as happened with Cityplace, is definitely progress,” said Radulovich.

CPMC has not had time to officially respond to the Mayor’s Office, but a spokesperson told the Chronicle: “We have only just begun to review the document, but clearly this is an ambitious request of a nonprofit hospital that is trying to meet its legally mandated seismic obligations.”

Stay tuned.

Photo: Myleen Hollero/Orange Photography

City planners often get very little public recognition for the work they do, and can sometimes take the heat on a project if it doesn’t prove politically popular. In the case of San Francisco’s revolutionary Pavement to Parks program, the early resistance to reclaiming public space from cars to create convivial spaces for people has gradually subsided and parklets are now in heavy demand. None of it would have been possible without the hard work and determination of Andres Power, an urban designer for the San Francisco Planning Department.

As the manager of the P2P program, Power has spent tireless hours managing the city’s initial plaza and parklet projects and moving them through the vast city bureaucracy. He deals regularly with merchants, neighbors and community groups. He’s worn a hardhat on many a Saturday and is the guy who gets called at midnight if something goes wrong.  Power’s unwavering dedication, even in the face of fierce opposition, has made him one of the unsung heroes of San Francisco’s livable streets movement.

Along with some of his colleagues at the Planning Department, Power is working from within to change the dysfunctional and old-school culture of city government with an eye to then transform our streets. The Pavement to Parks program is now catching the attention of cities all over the U.S. Last week, San Francisco issued a new request for parklet proposals, which means they’ll be spreading to even more neighborhoods.

Power was born in San Francisco and grew up in the East Bay city of Albany. I sat down with him recently to find out more about his interest in urban planning, and his involvement in the Pavement to Parks program.

Bryan Goebel: What sparked your interest in city planning?

Andres Power: I’ve always loved cities. Being in a place that’s dynamic and changing and exciting has always been something that has intrigued me. I’ve tried to think back and to figure out what my motivators were and I think I just landed in the right place, to be honest. I had some great professors in undergrad at Brown University that really were forward and progressive thinking and inspired me. Then, after undergraduate, I went and worked in New York at the Department of Housing and Preservation doing economic development for the city and it was just an amazing place to be. It was so crazy and frantic, such a huge and complicated bureaucracy, but still, individual people could make amazing changes.

Photo: Myleen Hollero/Orange Photography

BG: So this was in your early 20s? You must have graduated from college early then?

AP: I graduated from Brown when I was 20. I was young for my age because I skipped a grade early on. So yes, I graduated early and worked for New York for, I guess, three and a half years. It was a really fun place to be, and I moved my way up through the system there and I was actually working in the Section Eight program. It was tangential to my interest but it was a fascinating work with a lot of smart people and it just really cemented my love for cities. It was so satisfying knowing that as a bureaucrat, I could make positive change for people.

BG:  Yeah, and I imagine living in New York deepened and inspired your interest in urban planning.

AP: Absolutely. There’s no question about it. At that time it was right after 911, so it was early 2002. The offices were four blocks from the World Trade Center so it was an interesting place to be, for sure, and the focus was really on emergency management type stuff, at first, and then things calmed down, and it was much more about starting to think about the future, and looking at the long-terms goals of the city. The notion of working for an entity that is thinking about what the future’s going to be in 20-25 years, and doing things in the short-term, to move us in that direction is incredibly satisfying. That’s what I do here now. It’s really about seeing what we want this city to look like, how we want it to function, how we want it to be for the next generation and working on the immediate steps to make improvements that move us in that direction.

BG: So you spent three and a half years in New York City, and then went to grad school at MIT for two years?

AP: Two years, yes.  MIT was an interesting place for sure. The urban studies program was somewhat isolated from the rest of the university but was still a crazy place. The buildings were all connected underground by these tunnels and there’d gatherings sometimes on the weekend in the tunnels where people would all dress up in Star Trek attire. So, a lot of the stereotypes that you would think of for MIT, definitely a lot of that happened there. It’s also a great place to be. People were really smart, really motivated and undoubtedly the program really cemented the notion that this is really what it was that intrigued me.

BG: So after MIT what happened?

AP: Getting a job anywhere in government takes a lot of time so the beginning of my last semester, in January or so, there was a posting for jobs here in San Francisco. I applied and actually got called back sooner than I’d anticipated, came out here over spring break, had an interview, had a second interview and was hired as an entry level urban designer for the San Francisco Planning Department.

BG: What exactly were you hired to do?

AP: The first thing I did was to come up with a streetscape plan for San Jose Avenue. It was a good first stab at doing this type of work and getting to learn the dynamics and the politics here. I remember going out with then Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval in his personal car. He took me down and showed me what he thought needed improvement. It was great, understanding the craziness and how the system in the city works, and how the public realm is managed by so many different agencies and entities. It was an eye-opening experience. Then from there I started doing a lot of graphics type stuff and early plan development for the Rincon Hill streetscape plan and the Better Streets Plan.

Photo: Myleen Hollero/Orange Photography

BG: So how did Pavements to Parks get started? It all pretty much began with the 17th Street plaza, right?

AP: Yes. I’d been working with Adam Varat on content development for the Better Streets Plan for a couple of years at that point, and in that plan there was a lot of discussion about temporary uses of the right of way. What that meant wasn’t fully fleshed out but the idea was to be playful with the public realm and to think about uses that perhaps changed over time. Being creative in how we use a parking lane, for example, was particularly exciting to me. Then, New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn came and met with the different department directors and basically challenged the city to do something. She came and presented the work that she was doing to DPW Director Ed Reiskin, my director, John Rahim, and [SFMTA Chief] Nat Ford and the representatives of the Mayor’s Office and said, ‘This is what we’re doing in New York,’ which was a challenge to do something similar over here.

So, in response to that challenge, all the different departments submitted a list of possible projects based on culling the archives of community plans and public efforts. So that project, the Castro 17th project, was one that had been advanced by a couple of agencies. With DPW and MTA we moved it forward. This was around the same time that the Upper Market Streetscape Plan was being worked on and it talked a lot about making improvements to that intersection. So, it just sort of all came together, and [City Design Group Manager] David Alumbaugh felt very strongly that we should start off with something bold, making the subsequent projects easier by comparison. It was a smart move to make. As small as it is, the Plaza location was as complicated as one can be, with the streetcar going right through and cars coming from just about every direction. But we knew that the users were there, and that the community was generally on board with it. At the same time Public Architecture came to the city and was offering its services to help with a public space project.

“I think in my mind the most beneficial change is really pushing the city family to be okay with experimentation.”

Change is always hard. Beyond the actual projects that the Pavement to Parks program has installed, I think in my mind the most beneficial change is really pushing the city family to be okay with experimentation. At Castro, how a trial plaza could come together was incredibly challenging for the bureaucracy to wrap its collective head around. So the proposal languished. Getting approvals was incredibly difficult. But finally, with some colleagues we thought, ‘we’re just going to get this done, this is ridiculous,’ and we got it done. Once the project was installed some department heads came together with the Mayor’s Office to talk about what we learned and what the next steps were. Basically, what came out of that meeting was that we needed someone who would be empowered to just make things happen and someone who ultimately would be responsible for delivering the projects. So, they put me in charge and that’s how the program came to be.

Power with architect Jane Martin constructing the Guerrero Park plaza. Photo: Jamison Wieser

BG: What do you see as some of your biggest challenges now?

AP: Amongst the city family, I think generally speaking that there is alignment with what it is that we’re doing, but not everyone necessarily agrees 100 percent, or is as gung-ho about this work as I am. It’s incredibly difficult to get people to just say, ‘this is how we’re going to make it happen.’ The culture has been changing and it’s gotten much better, at least in a relative sense over the last number of years, but the culture’s always been, ‘no, you can’t do it and this is why.’ It’s never been, ‘This is what you want to do, let’s figure out how we’re going to make it happen.’ And as for design, it’s always been the common denominator that gets implemented. Everyone has to weigh in. Muni weighs in, the traffic engineer weighs in, the utilities weight in, the street sweeper weighs in. Then once you’ve resolved all of their individual concerns, you have your end product. That’s how things have been done historically, but at the end of the day that end product doesn’t necessarily advance the city’s collective goals. The most challenging piece is getting the projects through a system that is not geared to making these kinds of things happen in an easy way.

BG: What about the occasional opposition that arises from merchants, or neighbors, like what happened in Noe Valley?

AP: Not every project is going to work and I think it’s great, ultimately, that people speak up for what they believe. I may not necessarily agree with that position, and I may know their arguments are technically incorrect, but at the same time, I think it’s perfectly legitimate for people to not want something and I think that’s just part of the way things are in a heterogeneous community. Generally speaking, most people want urban public spaces, most people want open space, most people want amenities, most people want bicycle infrastructure, most people want storm water improvements. So, it’s not convincing people of the merits of that per se. A lot of it has to do with disagreements between one neighbor and another so these kinds of projects can become the polarizing element for that. I have no problem with this reality, and it’s why cities ultimately are fun places to work in. It’s not like working in the suburbs where you have a much more homogenous perspective on things.

“The culture’s always been, ‘no, you can’t do it and this is why.’ It’s never been, ‘This is what you want to do, let’s figure out how we’re going to make it happen.’ “

BG: I was walking on Dolores Street recently and had an encounter with a woman who was walking her dog and was just furious the city had removed a parking space in front of her house to install a crosswalk. There’s a ‘war on drivers,’ she exclaimed.  In your role as a planner, and this is a difficult question, but how do we win the hearts and minds of people like that who don’t feel like they want to give up any space for cars?

AP: It’s not an easy answer. If we knew the answer to that, then we’d be golden. I think there’s a couple of things at play. In large part our work is about education and we’re not always good at that. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best. I think generally the city family’s not very good at it, but really what we ought to be doing, as people who are paid to be thinking about the future, is tailoring our messaging in an understandable way and to be able to explain why it is we’re doing the things that we’re doing. So, I think a lot of it is education. Some people may just fundamentally disagree with your position and that’s okay. But many people, when you have an informed and rational discussion about the merits of an effort, can ultimately become your best supporters. But specifically when trade offs involve a car, I think unfortunately people can become very passionate about it.

BG: Emotions can get in the way.

AP: It’s very emotional, yes, and so to a certain extent you have to do your very best to educate, and to be that facilitator and explain what it is that you’re doing, and why you’re doing it, and what the benefits are for each person because ultimately it’s not just about taking away something from one person, and giving it to another. It’s about advancing our collective benefit. I think any type of change can be difficult for people, but at the same time, I do believe that delivering good projects and being able to show, for example, the lady with her dog, that benefit to her as she’s trying to cross the street. There really is an immediate benefit to her. She’s probably much less likely to get hit by a speeding car. Her dog is less likely to get run over because of that improvement that was made.  So, it wasn’t just about taking a parking space away, it was about making her condition better. I think the city is not the best at making this understood, although we’re constantly working to improve our communication.

Enjoying a light moment in the Castro plaza while shooting a Streetfilm. From left, Power, City Design Group Manager David Alumbaugh and filmmaker Paul Jaffe. Photo: Bryan Goebel

BG: Where do you see the Pavements to Parks program going?

AP: That’s a good question. The Pavements to Parks program has been really focused as of late on getting the parklets up and running. I think we’ve done that. I think we’ve created a model that is sustainable for the long term. We’ve done a lot of work, with great help from the Department of Public Works, the MTA and the SF Great Streets Project, to come up with the mechanisms to evaluate these projects and facilitate them because at the end of the day we want to be encouraging this. We want the city structure to be set up in such a way that it’s incentivizing and not making it difficult to make public improvements.  So, with that under our belt, to a certain extent the question now becomes, what’s next? Are there going to be more plazas? Are we going to be doing some other design typology perhaps that we haven’t even thought about yet? I think the answer to that ought to be yes. Aside from the physical projects that Pavement to Parks has produced, which I think are great things, one of the amazing contributions it’s provided is showing that experimentation is a good thing, and how it can produce good stuff. The vehicle of Pavement to Parks, this interagency cooperation, can apply to anything. Theoretically, it could apply to innovative treatments of a bike lane, or whatever it is we want to try. The structure of Pavement to Parks is such that the actual physical improvement can be anything, but the process to get it on the ground is really about what Pavements to Parks provides, and it’s an expedited process. I think it’s a great example of what happens when people come together saying, ‘We want to get this done, how are we going to make it happen,’ as opposed to figuring out a way why you can’t.

I think the streets of our city ought to be designed for the kind of use that provides the most benefit to the most people, both at the local level, and ultimately on a global level because what is sustainable in the long term is a city that encourages and gives priority to people who want to walk and who want to move around in a way that doesn’t produce an externality on somebody else. Unfortunately, for the last 50 years, it’s been the opposite. We have been prioritizing the mode of transport that provides the most externalities on people, and so I think a long-term vision for the city is one in which the fabric really is about the best common good. I think for me what that means is a place where driving is a last option. I think we’ve got a long way to go to get there, while, at the same time, I do feel like there will always be the need for a vehicle. I have to remember to say that because I do believe it. I think whether it’s a solar powered car or whatever it is, ultimately there is a need for transport of kids and goods but as a primary transportation mode, I think that there isn’t room for that in the city.

BG: What advice would you have for other cities looking to do parklets and plazas and repurpose space for people?

AP: Start with the location, either for a plaza or a parklet, that you know will be successful. One that has a strong on the ground partner who is vested in helping ensure that the space is successful. This is absolutely key as the success of the first installation sets the groundwork for many more. Also, don’t expect to create a program first. Start with a great project that people will be excited about and the the program will follow. Get authority from the very top – you’ll need it – so that you can push through the inevitable red tape. Also, have an answer to the inevitable questions that will come up. “Putting a parklet in will make the cross section of the street too narrow for a fire truck.” Remind the reviewer that a parklet is no wider than a parked car.  If it’s okay that a car is parked there, why can’t people sit there too. Celebrate the first project. From there, the next installations become easier.

Mayor Ed Lee and SFMTA Chief Nat Ford demonstrate the iPhone application for SFPark. The first screen displayed is a warning not to check your device while driving. Photos: Bryan Goebel

San Francisco launched the world’s most innovative parking pilot today, a federally-funded trial that promises to revolutionize the way cities manage and price metered curb parking. SFPark will make it easier for motorists to find spaces in busy commercial districts, while reducing congestion, speeding Muni, and improving air quality and safety for bicyclists and pedestrians.

The milestone for SFPark was celebrated at a packed press conference in the North Light Court at City Hall this morning. SFMTA Chief Nat Ford was joined by Mayor Ed Lee, parking guru and UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, and other dignitaries to announce the SFPark iPhone application and real-time parking availability data.

The demand-based parking pilot is being implemented over the coming months, covering 7,000 of the city’s 28,800 metered spaces and 12,250 garage spaces. Drivers, thanks to street sensors, or magnetometers, will be able to check their iPhone application (an app will be available for Android in the coming weeks), or computer, to get real-time data on the availability and cost of parking spaces in 15 commercial districts.

“How many of you have been dumb in your past? How many you have acted dumb? I know I have,” said Mayor Lee. “You know, when you’re driving around looking for a parking space and you’re double parking and you’re running around trying to see whether something will open, you’re dumb.”

“We want to be less dumb about this, and that’s why I’m so happy to launch today’s pilot program, SFPark,” Lee said. “That’s going to be our San Francisco version of congestion pricing.”

From left, Board of Supes Prez David Chiu, SFMTA Chief Nat Ford, UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, SFCTA Executive Director Jose Luis Moskovich, and Supervisor and TA Board Chair Ross Mirkarimi.

Lee said that parking meter translated in Chinese as “the lion machine,” and in Chinese culture “when you are confronted with a lion, the lion eats you.” Because of SFPark, he said, parking meters will be “less of a beast,” and drivers will be so happy they found a spot “you’ll want to Tweet it out.”

“SFPark creates a perfect marriage of technology, real-time information and pricing to make it easier for people to park here in downtown San Francisco,” said Federal Highway Administration Deputy Director Greg Nadeau. “This is not just about technology or pricing. It’s about making it easier to park in a major city and all the benefits that flow from addressing that one issue.”

Nadeau said the federal government was happy to award a $20 million grant to make SFPark happen, and that it was consistent with the livability goals of the U.S. Department of Transportation, led by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Click to enlarge this image of the SFPark iPhone App, now available in the iTunes Store and the SFPark site. Image: SFMTA

“I’m so glad that we’re welcoming your not ordinary smart meter into San Francisco. Finally we have a smart meter that doesn’t cause headaches, it actually helps them,” joked Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, the chair of the San Francisco Transportation Authority Board, in reference to the turmoil over PG&E’s electricity smart meters. “There are over 200,000 vehicles that enter San Francisco’s borders every single day and it’s incumbent upon us to do everything that we can to try to alleviate that congestion.”

Professor Shoup said the central idea behind SFPark is that you can’t set the right price for curb parking without first knowing how people are using that parking.

“SFPark sets a clear principle for setting the prices for curb parking, the lowest price the city can charge without creating a shortage. So, the right price for curb parking in San Francisco is rather like the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography: I know it when I see it.”

He pointed out that thirty percent of San Francisco households don’t own a car and the city uses parking meter revenue to subsidize Muni. Oftentimes, transit riders “are mired in traffic congested by richer drivers who are cruising for under-priced curb parking.”

“You pay every time you board a bus and that makes you think about whether you want to ride the bus. If you also pay the market price for curb parking every time you pull into a space it will also make you think about whether you want to drive,” Shoup told the crowd, adding that SFPark has the potential to tame the politics surrounding parking because “wanting more money will no longer justify raising the price of parking.”

Today’s City Hall event marked the culmination of years of work by the SFMTA on the project, which initially faced a wave of resistance, and now enjoys the full support of the city’s political establishment. SFMTA staffers, led by SFPark Manager Jay Primus and SFMTA CFO Sonali Bose, worked tirelessly over the past three years conducting outreach to elected officials, merchants and neighborhood groups.

“The people who are working on SFPark are the smartest and most talented and most overworked civil servants I have ever met,” said Shoup. “If SFPark is a success, it will be in large part due to the heroic determination to make it work here.”

And if it doesn’t work?

“Well, then you can always blame it on a dumb professor from Los Angeles,” Shoup said.

"I think SFPark will give San Francisco the best of both worlds. If it works it will make San Francisco an even better place to live and work and visit and do business. It will be another feather in the city's cap and other cities around the world will copy you," said UCLA Professor and parking guru Donald Shoup.

One of SFPark's 5,000 "coin and card" meters. SFPark will result in less congestion in busy commercial corridors, which will mean improved conditions for bicyclists and pedestrians. Photo: Bryan Goebel

Using the new credit-card enabled parking meters. Photo: SFMTA

The central principle of San Francisco’s cutting-edge parking management program, SFPark, comes right from Econ 101. If there are more people looking for parking than there are parking spaces (i.e. demand is greater than supply) adjust the price of parking until there is enough turnover on a given street, or roughly one free parking space per block. Sounds simple in theory, right?

On the other hand, implementing the principle in real-world conditions at over 6,000 curbside parking spaces and 11,500 off-street spaces in city-owned garages is very complicated. The federal government, which has paid for most of the program with approximately $20 million in grants, wants proof that San Francisco can meet its stated goals of reducing traffic and speeding up transit with smart parking management. That will require copious data and extensive analysis.

Most importantly for parking managers at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), they want the public to like it. If a driver doesn’t get to a parking space quickly, thus reducing the cruising for spaces that generates up to 40 percent of local traffic in some cities, then the program won’t deliver on its goal. Similarly if drivers aren’t happy with the convenience of the new meters or other payment options, like pay-by-phone.

Jay Primus, SFPark’s manager, understands the significance of his work and has been spending most of his waking hours for the last three years at work or conducting outreach with businesses, politicians and community groups.

As I sat down recently with Primus in his windowless office on the top floor of the SFMTA building at 1 South Van Ness Avenue, I was impressed with the impeccable order he kept. Two rows of more than twenty manila envelopes were lined neatly on a table near his desk, each representing a different part of the project, from a folder bearing the name of the communications consultants he hired, to another for grant obligation deadlines to the US Department of Transportation.

Several enormous maps of San Francisco and the SFPark areas adorned his office walls. One map, approximately 5 feet by 5 feet, showed every publicly available parking space in San Francisco and represented the first census of parking spaces conducted in any city in the world. On another wall, Primus had a scrolling work-flow plan tacked right above a cover story in the tabloid San Francisco Examiner with the inflammatory headline, “Parking Privileges to Be Revoked!”

Primus, a tall man with a studious mien and a quiet voice, worked as a transportation planner for a private firm before joining the SFMTA in 2007 to direct SFPark. He measures most of his words carefully, often stopping mid-sentence to replace technical jargon with more pedestrian language.

Primus tells me the public’s reaction to the new meters that accept credit cards has been “largely positive.” He acknowledges that some have complained that the meters are not easy to read at night, but he says increasing the back-lighting uses more power and shortens battery life.

In addition to the information the SFMTA will gather from the new parking meters about how people choose to pay and how long they pay, the agency has installed occupancy sensors in the pavement in SFPark areas that provide real-time information on how long cars are parking at spaces. When I ask him about the information the agency is already collecting, his eyes light up. “One of the most exciting things about SFpark is the fabulous, unprecedented data set,” he said. “I do believe it’s the first of its kind.”

The Unprecedented Data Set

Primus and his team will cross-reference those parking data from the meters and sensors with citation data; travel demand data from regional and city roadway sensors; transit boardings from BART and Muni; parking tax and sales tax returns; collision statistics from the SFPD and the state; manual data collection such as driver intercept surveys, parking search time surveys, double parking counts, disabled placard use, occupancy information in residential neighborhoods adjacent to SFPark areas; and exogenous statistics like the cost of gasoline, the unemployment rate, the consumer price index and hourly precipitation.

Comparing parking data to transit boardings on Muni is not trivial, Primus explains, because he will have to demonstrate the effect smarter parking management has on transit travel time and transit delays. If there are open spaces at the curb, in theory there should less double-parking and fewer delays to buses. Measuring parking and sales tax returns or gas prices should let the SFMTA know how much of the reduction in traffic is due to SFPark and how much is due to larger economic patterns. He even hopes to show that better parking management reduces traffic collisions and increases safety as drivers cruise less for an elusive space.

The obvious implication about the status quo in San Francisco and every other city that doesn’t collect this information is that policy makers know embarrassingly little about how the standards, prices and regulations they put on parking actually effect traffic, the way people park, or even how people feel about parking (and in civic life, parking is almost as emotive an issue as the crime rate).

Donald Shoup, the UCLA economics professor and author of The High Cost of Free Parking, whose work is the theoretical underpinning of SFPark, has a favorite adage that he quoted to Streetsblog when critiquing how parking policies are currently set nearly everywhere: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

SFPark should give San Francisco managers an unparalleled road map whereby they can make educated policy decisions and they can measure the impact those have in real-time.

Improving the Public Perception of Parking

“We’ve done a lot of outreach with SFPark and have talked to a lot of community groups,” said Primus. “People we talk to are sometimes skeptical about the SFMTA’s intentions, that somehow SFPark is meant to gouge drivers for additional parking revenue. That’s just not the case.”

He is actually optimistic the program will become popular with drivers, for numerous reasons. “We hope to earn people’s trust that SFMTA’s parking management can help achieve our goals for the city,” he said.

Click to enlarge this image of the SFPark iPhone App, which will be available soon in the iTunes Store. Image: SFMTA

In addition to the convenience of paying at the meter with credit cards and extending meter limits up to four hours in certain areas, when the SFMTA officially launches the program later this spring, it will provide a map with real-time occupancy and price rates at every meter and parking garage in SFPark. The SFMTA will also release an iPhone app at the launch, with other app formats to follow.

The maps will color-code blocks, with dark blue indicating there are available parking spaces, light blue showing fewer spaces, and red suggesting drivers park elsewhere. Each public garage in the program will be indicated with a large P icon and will be represented with the same color scheme.

Just as drivers look at real-time traffic information on Google Maps, for instance, Primus imagines drivers will check for parking availability at their destination even before they get in the car. What about those drivers who would check their phones while driving? Primus explains that the app uses the phone’s GPS and has an automatic warning if it detects the phone is moving faster than 10 miles per hour. This feature, said Primus, will “remind people that it is illegal to use a cell phone while driving.”

The map and the mobile app will also display pricing information in various shades of green (“for money,” said Primus), with details on parking rates by hour and by location at the tip or one’s fingertips. All real-time data will be made available on an open API for third-party developers as well.

One thing the SFMTA won’t do is give availability by individual parking space, though they have that specificity internally. “We don’t’ want people to race to get to a space or fight over spaces they feel ownership of,” said Primus.

Perhaps the most important part of improving the convenience of parking with SFPark is an option to pay by phone at meters and garages throughout the city. Though the service won’t be activated until later this year, and still needs SFMTA board of directors approval, Primus said they intend to offer the pay-by-phone service at every one of the nearly 27,000 meters citywide.

This would allow anyone who has signed up with a credit card to pay for parking through their phones, to get updates automatically to their phone when time is running out, and to pay for more parking with the touch of a button, so long as they aren’t exceeding time limits. No more leaving a restaurant or a business meeting to feed the meter, said Primus. A similar service is already operational in over 100 cities throughout North America and Europe.

Long-Term Impacts of the Trial

By law, the SFPark meter rates will only change once a month at the most, so drivers shouldn’t expect a price shock. Nor will the rates likely change that dramatically, according to Primus. In some cases, where there are many vacant spaces in an area, the meter rates could come down.

No one will know how it all works before the trial starts, but the SFMTA expects to gain efficiencies in meter maintenance and enforcement. As Primus noted, the meters will instantly communicate with his database when they go out of service, so meter technicians won’t have to guess or do broad sweeps to find malfunctioning meters.

Enforcement will be much more precise as well, though Primus doesn’t expect to see ticket blitzes. Rather, he argued, with longer time limits and easier ways to pay, such as pay-by-phone, he thinks PCOs will write fewer tickets for meter violations. “We want PCOs to have more time available to enforce other issues, such as double parking, sidewalk parking or driveway parking, issues that effect transportation, quality of life and access more generally,” he said.

In fact, Primus expects meter-related citations to drop significantly as people find it easier to pay. Rather than the current “punitive” ratio of $34 million in meter revenue and $30 million in meter-related fine revenue each year, Primus hopes to see most of the revenue coming from proper payment. “People pay for parking one way or another, either at the meter or with parking tickets. For everyone’s benefit we want everyone to pay at the meter to reduce the number of parking-related tickets we have to give,” he said.

Donald Shoup didn’t mask his excitement about the impending start of SFPark, which he characterized as the most significant example of parking reform to come in the six years since he published his 750 page epic (the book has been so popular it will be released in paperback later this year). Shoup said “academics are just drooling about all this data” and he predicted legions of PhD dissertations to result from SFPark.

Most importantly for cities, though, he hoped to see a direct relationship in the data between parking and economic activity. Good parking management “can make the whole transportation system perform better because there is less cruising and it will make the whole economy perform better,” he said. “If this relationship appears in the data, it will show people this is a very powerful tool for economic development in cities.”

Photo: Aaron Bialick

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.”

Catherine Stefanie, a mother and aide to Supervisor Mark Farrell, argued in support of the proposal. ”It’s not ‘Transit First’ versus helping working families,” she said. ”I think a lot of working families try ‘Transit First’ and use their cars when necessary. It doesn’t mean [it] won’t be an option for these families.”

Still, the conventional wisdom of transporting children by car is questionable, as is the need for child care providers to drive at all. “I raised my two kids on Muni,” said Bob Planthold of the Senior Action Network. “I wonder why these folks who have the capacity to hire a nanny can’t allow their driveway or garage to be used by the nanny’s car, or they can’t allow the nanny to drive one of the family cars, or why they expect their kids have to be taken around by cars.”

Under the current proposal, each household within a residential parking permit area would be allowed to issue approved caregivers a number of their allotted four permits, very few of which are regularly used, according to SFMTA Sustainable Streets Director Bond Yee.

Aiming to avoid “painting with a broad brush,” Director Jerry Lee proposed a trial of the program on a “block-by-block” basis that would require residents to garner a 51-percent approval from their neighbors in the same way that residential parking permit areas are already established.

The directors came to a consensus on piloting neighborhood-approved programs for nine months while also lowering the children’s age limit from twelve to six and imposing a thorough approval process to be amended into the proposal’s language before implementation. Strict penalties for fraud, such as revoking all permits from a household, will also be discussed in future meetings.

The board also voted to begin charging SFMTA employees for parking at a below-market rate of $80 per month, a price set by adding $10 to the cost of a Muni Fast Pass, according to SFMTA CFO Sonali Bose. Options for hourly, daily, and weekly permits will also be available, and the fine for violations will be $55.

In addition, a 2-hour time limit at all broken meters was approved following concerns that vandalism could increase when SFPark is fully implemented in March.

Grosvenor Square, London, the site of Europe's first parking meter, shows how putting a price on parking clears up the street and makes parking available. Image: ITDP.

Flashback to Europe, sixty years ago. Only still emerging from the ruin of total war, the continent was in the midst of a nearly unprecedented reconstruction. Over the next decade, however, industry finally was able to turn toward consumer products, from stockings to refrigerators and, of course, the automobile. Italians owned only 342,000 cars in 1950, but ten years later that number had increased to two million, according to historian Tony Judt. In France, the number of cars tripled over the decade.

With mass car-ownership fundamentally new for Europe, parking policy was practically non-existent. The first parking meter — an American invention — only made it to Europe in 1958, arriving in front of the American embassy in London. In most places, cars could park not only for free but wherever they wanted: on the sidewalk, in a public square.

When they realized that simply giving drivers free rein to park anywhere was untenable, Europeans attempted to build enough parking to meet the population’s galloping demand. Public space, from sidewalks to canals, was turned into parking space. Zoning forced all new development to use money and space for parking. All these concessions, however, only made European cities friendlier to cars and further drove up demand.

Today, however, all that is in the past. As outlined in the new report from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, “Europe’s Parking U-Turn: From Accommodation to Regulation,” the continent is now leading the world when it comes to innovative, intelligent and sustainable parking policy [PDF].

Across Europe, cities have come to understand that oversupply or subsidy of parking leads to too much driving. The effect is considerable. In Vienna, for example, when the city began to charge for on-street parking, the number of vehicle kilometers traveled plummeted from 10 million annually to 3 million. In Munich, the introduction of a new parking management system has resulted in 1,700 fewer automobiles owned in the city center each year since 2000.

Zurich has emerged as a world leader on parking policy. Here, on-street parking was replaced with pedestrian space, likely to compensate for new off-street spaces. Image: ITDP.

Looking across the Atlantic offers a wide array of strategies to manage parking more effectively.

• Free daytime parking was eliminated completely in Munich. 95 percent of Paris’ roughly 50,000 free parking spaces were converted to paid spaces.
• Too often, the decision of how much parking to provide is disconnected from any other city goals. Not in Zurich. Under the terms of the city’s “Historischer Parkplatz Kompromiss,” each development is assigned a cap on the number of trips that can be made by car, which is controlled by the amount of parking provided onsite. The cap is determined by looking at the congestion and air quality in the immediate area.
• Parking maximums have replaced parking minimums in cities such as Zurich, Amsterdam and Strasbourg. The Swiss, Italian and British governments all recommend that local governments use maximums, in the words of the British government, to “promote sustainable transport choices, reduce the land-take of development, enable schemes to fit into central urban sites, promote linked-trips and access to development for those without use of a car, and to tackle congestion.”
• The idea behind parking minimums for commercial space is to ensure that employees of a new development don’t fill up all an area’s parking spaces. Logically, therefore, Hamburg decided that if enough employees at a company had a transit pass, that company should have to reduce the amount of parking it provides.
• Hard caps on the amount of parking downtown are in place in Hamburg, Zurich, and Budapest. No one can build a new off-street space unless the city agrees to take away an on-street space. Despite rising prosperity and car ownership, the number of parking spaces in the center of Hamburg has remained at 30,000 since 1976.
• Regulating parking only works if those regulations are enforced, a job that Europeans have made easier through new technology. Across France, magnetic sensors are employed to determine when cars overstay time limits. Amsterdam uses a fleet of vans with license plate-reading cameras to track violations.
• On-street parking rates better reflect market demand. In London, rates go up to £4.40 an hour ($7.04), and in Amsterdam up to €5 ($6.75). In New York City, by comparison, rates only go up to $3.75.
• Parking management has been closely tied to Europe’s largest bike-sharing systems. In Paris and Barcelona, bike-sharing stations replaced thousands of on-street spaces, and in Barcelona, all parking revenue goes directly to supporting bike-sharing.

Across Europe, there appears to be a much heavier emphasis on providing residential parking permits, public-private partnerships to operate the parking system, and technological conveniences like pay-by-phone parking.

Cities like London and Paris are New York City’s competitors. While they move forward with these innovative programs, New York still forces its drivers and bus riders to sit behind a line of traffic cruising for a rare open space or holding out for one of the city’s many free on-street spaces. New York tacks the cost of unwanted parking onto every new office and residence. In commercial zones, meanwhile, parking spaces are commandeered for hours, reducing turnover and making deliveries a hassle. Not to mention the environmental and safety disasters of encouraging all those extra car trips.

The Mayor’s Office is thinking about tackling parking policy in this spring’s update of PlaNYC, and hopefully they’ll use this ITDP report to adapt some of Europe’s best ideas. Then again, they just bowed to motorist influence in the City Council over raising meter rates by just a quarter. Giving New York City’s parking policy the same U-turn that Europe took will apparently be quite the political lift.

Photo: Myleen Hollero/Orange Photography

Anyone who wants to use a parking space with a broken meter in San Francisco today is allowed to park for free as long as the posted time limit allows. Given that kind of incentive, some people who drive are finding ways to break meters on a daily basis in order to avoid paying.

As the SFPark program fully launches March 1 and implements direct demand-based parking pricing on a quarter of the city’s meters, time limits will be increased to four hours or eliminated altogether with the aim of facilitating more convenient parking, encouraging payment compliance, and reducing enforcement labor.

However, under the current broken meter policy, some drivers may find more incentive to disable meters and take advantage of the longer time limits. In order to avoid such an unintended consequence, the SFMTA Board’s Policy and Governance Committee has agreed to set a standard two-hour maximum limit at broken meters, something that must still be approved by the full board.

According to a policy report presented by SFMTA CFO Sonali Bose, between 300 to 500 parking meters are broken on any given day, and 80 to 90 percent of those are due to vandalism. While that may only amount to 1 to 3 percent of the city’s meters, Sustainable Streets Director Bond Yee said about 60 percent of those are repaired within the first day and 96 percent within three days, no small feat for repair crews.

An SFMTA study shows that out of twelve major North American cities, five don’t even allow parking at broken meters. Most notably, Los Angeles adopted such a policy specifically to address vandalism and found significant success, according to Bose.

Broken Meter Policies of 12 North American Cities included in the report. Click to enlarge.

With some of the incoming SFPark meters covering up to eight spots, the need to disincentivize vandalism is greater than ever.

Of the four policy options presented to committee, which ranged from keeping the status quo to banning all parking at broken meters, Bose recommended a one-hour limit. That, she said, would allow some leeway for those who mistakenly park their cars at already broken meters while minimizing the incentive to vandalize. A consistent time limit would also simplify enforcement, Bose noted in her report.

SFMTA CEO Nat Ford agreed with the recommendation, which would set San Francisco’s policy “somewhere in the middle” of other cities’.

“It’s a revenue issue and a cost issue,” said Ford, who cited repairs, revenue loss, and enforcement inefficiencies among the financial impacts of vandalism. The cost of repairing meters alone is estimated to be $225,000 per year, according to the report.

Director Cameron Beach was skeptical of a complete ban on broken meter parking, expressing concerns for drivers who park at meters without realizing they’re broken, while Director Jerry Lee voiced skepticism about the effectiveness of lower time limits to prevent vandalism.

Director Cheryl Brinkman was in favor of a limit as strict as necessary. “Maybe we need to consider this as a step-by-step, and if we don’t have success reducing the vandalism at a one-hour time limit, then we have to consider going to ‘no parking at broken meters’,” she said.

In the end, the committee favored a two-hour maximum limit for approval, with the potential for it to be lowered in the future. Under the rule, posted time limits of less than two hours would still be enforced.

Drivers block sidewalks rampantly in the Sunset. Photo: SF Department of Sidewalk Parking

As the SFMTA strives to hone its parking enforcement effectiveness, assaults against Parking Control Officers (PCOs) have remained not only a threat to the safety of civil servants in the line of duty, but also an obstacle to the safety of our streets which they are vitally charged with maintaining.

In response to SFMTA Board Director Cheryl Brinkman’s pressing the issue of sidewalk parking at Tuesday’s Policy and Governance Committee meeting, Deputy Director of Enforcement Joy Houlihan cited “neighborhood sensitivity” as one problem faced by PCOs when they attempt to issue tickets for violations.

In some areas like the Sunset District, according to Houlihan, the dominant attitude is: “Don’t ever enforce in my neighborhood.”

It goes without saying that the safety of PCOs should be a top priority, and the SFMTA did launch an assault prevention campaign, but it shouldn’t be an excuse for tolerating illegally stored private property that creates a public nuisance and endangers some of the city’s most vulnerable citizens.

“It is one of those violations that can be invisible to car drivers, but to pedestrians and especially to wheelchair users, it’s huge,” said Brinkman.

Houlihan said other neighborhoods like the Haight and the Castro overwhelmingly ask for enforcement. That attitude is likely more representative of neighborhoods where residents tend to walk frequently and not even own cars.

While the Sunset’s relatively high car ownership may be one factor in its stronger resistance to enforcement, the way management instructs PCOs to cite sidewalk violations also comes into question. A sign of dissonance between policy and practice within the agency arose as SFMTA CEO Nat Ford recounted the official strategy on sidewalk parking.

“As a practice, historically, we didn’t cite unless we got a call,” Ford said.

“Correct, and we still do,” Houlihan responded.

Ford then clarified the standing policy: “We changed that about a year or two ago, which is, whatever a PCO sees, we cite. That delineation was made.”

However, it seems that consistent enforcement may not be the regular practice as Houlihan described blanket stings that are often used in problem areas after local violators are given two-weeks “fair warning.” Ford sought to assure Houlihan that the policy of having PCOs cite violations as they see them was not in question, and didn’t need to be reexamined.

Along with sidewalks, blocked intersections and crosswalks remain another rampant problem posed by people driving, endangering non-motorized street users and slowing transit vehicles. Although such moving violations involving confrontation with drivers are usually left to police, PCOs share responsibility in this area.

Sustainable Streets Director Bond Yee explained that a change in the California Vehicle Code ten years ago allows blocking an intersection to be cited as a parking infraction and mailed to the driver, thereby removing the risk for PCOs. Whether or not this could be used as a viable solution for regular parking enforcement in areas where officers feel at risk was not discussed.

In her presentation, Houlihan did report higher PCO effectiveness overall due to stepped-up training efforts. Despite having furlough days and 21 fewer officers, findings from November 2010 showed a 16.5 percent improvement in citations issued for violations of residential parking permit areas, overtime parking, yellow zones, tow-away zones, and bike lanes when compared to the same period in 2009.

Although total citations issued have fallen over the last year, revenue over the past five years has apparently remained flat and Houlihan says each officer is issuing more tickets overall.

Brinkman said the SFMTA needs to plan for a budget that is less dependent on citations as fines rise and parking behavior improves, and as SFPark allows more accurate parking pricing and easier payment.

“It’s interesting because you have the PCOs who are no longer doing the street sweeping, we’ve got those PCOs redeployed. I would imagine with increased enforcement in [other] areas, we’re going to start seeing fewer violations, and that’s probably unintentionally created a cascading citation decrease,” she noted.

It'd be nice to think that these PCOs simply ran out of violations to cite. Photo: Aaron Bialick

The recent decline in revenue from parking citations brought on a discussion at Tuesday’s SFMTA Board of Directors meeting about the city’s budget policy on parking. In her latest budget presentation, SFMTA CFO Sonali Bose cited the economy and a reduction in street sweeping but noted that one reason for the drop in ticketing is actually a trend of better driver compliance resulting from factors such as increasing fines and ease of payment brought on by credit card-accessible SFPark meters.

Deficit aside, that’s the kind of trend Bose and some directors want to encourage. ”Our policy goal is to actually have people pay the meter rather than having a citation,” she said. In fact, Bose expects to see some of the $7.3 million citation revenue deficit compensated by a rise in meter revenue: “We’re not seeing the negative variance on the meter side.”

The SFMTA will still be deploying more Parking Control Officers, but Director Cheryl Brinkman suggested changes in parking pricing in order to close the gap while encouraging the good behavior. ”We do need to look at parking as a system and really figure out what’s going on. If people want to avoid citations, then they might have to accept the fact that we need to expand meter operations and maybe increase meter prices,” she said. “They can’t have it both ways.”

To that end, Brinkman clarified that a more efficient parking system should be less punitive and ultimately make life easier for those who need to drive as well as everyone else. “Personally, I’d like to see the citation charges go down and hours that you can park free decrease. That seems to make more sense – that spot is there, that meter is there – I’d rather have people pay to park at that spot than try to game the system and maybe end up with a ticket,” she said.

“The tickets are expensive, so I can completely see people’s pain when they make a mistake and get back to their meter a little late,” added Brinkman.

While there wasn’t any disagreement expressed against expanding metered parking, Board Chair Tom Nolan and Malcolm Heinicke were sure to dispel any “war on drivers” often presented in media coverage. “I think there’s a perception out there…that when we say we’re going to make the system more efficient, we’re just going to issue more tickets. If there’s efficiency, it might actually benefit some drivers when you add up the costs,” said Heinicke.

Fifty percent of the reduction in issued parking fines is said to be a result of reduced street sweeping, something Heinicke said he hasn’t been able to get an answer about over the years. “We’ve eliminated a service of cleaning the street in a manner that actually costs the city, as a whole, money,” he said.

Although Director Bruce Oka noted his own observations of more careful parking behavior and would like to see high fines become unnecessary, he expressed a less tolerant view of poor parking behavior. “It continues to fascinate me the number of people that complain to me about parking citations that are for people blocking the whole sidewalk, parking in red zones, and this kind of thing,” he said.

“Inevitably, if you don’t want to pay the parking tickets, don’t park illegally.”