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

Graphic: New York Times/Chicago News Cooperative.

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: carbonmotion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: Matthew Roth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo: jennifer jeffrey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the complete Chu email after the jump.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the MTA Board meeting this Tuesday, MTA staff will present the findings of the pathbreaking parking study [Summary PDF] [Full Study PDF] released earlier this week. It's the only official discussion of the study scheduled for now, and advocates for transit and parking reform will need to attend in force to show the MTA Board there's strong support for the recommendations.

The study's recommendations could bring in badly needed revenue and reduce future transit service cuts, while creating more parking turnover and making it much easier to find a parking spot on evenings and Sundays.

Walk SF Executive Director Manish Champsee said he's notifying members about the meeting, and hopes advocates will show up. "I suspect there will be a lot of people on the anti-side," said Champsee. "It's definitely important that as many people as possible who favor extending meter hours get out there and show their support."

The SFBC's Andy Thornley said his organization will be notifying members as well, in its regular Tuesday morning email update, and contacting some members directly before then. "Organizationally, we are actively working to build support and bring that support to the Board," Thornley said.

In addition, SFBC has sent a letter [PDF] to the MTA Board "urging that they support the report and adapt the findings as soon as possible," said Thornley.

As Streetsblog reported earlier this week, MTA Board Chairman Tom Nolan said the agency faces a dire financial situation with the budget deficit, which he estimated at $30 million. Without new sources of revenue, said Champsee, the budget may be balanced once again mostly at riders' expense.

As part of a compromise with the Board of Supervisors, who ultimately approved the MTA's budget earlier this year despite some supervisors' concerns about the impact on transit riders, the MTA agreed to conduct a study on increasing parking enforcement hours. "The original budget closed the gap on the backs of riders over the backs of drivers by a virtue of 4 to 1," said Champsee. "It's important that it doesn't get even more skewed."

The Mayor opposes the study's recommendations, and many merchant groups are not yet swayed in their favor. Without vocal support from advocates, the changes may never be fully or even partially implemented, despite the exhaustiveness of the study. The meeting will also offer a chance to comment on the recommendations and suggest refinements, while demonstrating that there's strong demand for Shoupian parking management reform.

San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors meeting. Tuesday, October 20th at 2 p.m. San Francisco City Hall, room 400. The parking study presentation is item 14 on the agenda. The meeting will be broadcast online on SFGTV2. See Andy Thornley's comment below for suggestions on who to contact with your thoughts on the parking study. You can also send feedback to extendedhours@sfmta.com.

With the debate about parking meter rates and hours raging on both sides of the Bay, Streetsblog called UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking and arguably the world's foremost parking expert, and asked him his opinion on the new San Francisco MTA parking meter study, which was released on Tuesday and calls for increasing meter hours in commercial districts where parking occupancy rises above 85 percent and where businesses are open late on weekdays and on Sundays.

Professor Shoup had read the study and called it "pathbreaking," lauding the MTA for being thorough and data-driven and for embracing occupancy targets for managing parking supply.

Professor Shoup also re-iterated the importance of Community Benefit Districts (CBDs) as a tool for selling parking reform to the public. In CBDs, a portion of the new meter revenue collected in commercial districts is returned to that district for sidewalk repair, street trees, enhanced street cleaning, etc., so that businesses can see firsthand how parking revenue improves their streets.

MTA Chief Nat Ford told Streetsblog his agency is not yet ready to have that discussion, and further complications arise because the Department of Public Works is responsible for maintaining sidewalks. How and when an arrangement between the two agencies would be brokered is anyone's guess.

Professor Shoup also pointed to Redwood City, Ventura, and Old Pasadena for best practice examples of occupancy-based parking policy changes that have revitalized neighborhoods and facilitated business. Read his full comments after the jump.

What do you think about the public backlash when the City of Oakland raised meter rates and extended meter times citywide?
Well, I hope that Oakland hasn't poisoned the well for parking reform. I think their ham-handed approach caused a lot of horror. They simply raised prices citywide without any explanation of what the principles used for pricing were. I think that San Francisco's policy is far more sophisticated, user friendly, and well thought out. I think there's no comparison between what Oakland did and the fiasco that followed and what San Francisco is doing.

Were you surprised at how upset people were in Oakland?
Well, no. Some of the same thing happened in LA. They upped the price citywide by a minimum of one dollar and extended some hours and they thought people would simply assume it was a good idea. I think they should tailor parking prices very carefully to the time and the place and not have a citywide blanket ordinance saying we're going to raise everything everywhere.

What are your impressions of the MTA's new parking meter study?
It's pathbreaking. There's never been anything like it anywhere before. I think they've done the right thing to say, 'we're aiming for an occupancy rate.'  You want the spaces to be well used, but readily available. Well used means almost full, but readily available means not quite full. You have to be very careful to make sure you get that right. They're willing to adjust it if they get it wrong. I think the right price for parking is sort of like the Supreme Court's definition for pornography: I know it when I see it. There's no way to say the price is right except by looking at the result and San Francisco is committed to change the price wherever they get it wrong.

I think they did it with a very careful goal in mind and that is: set the lowest possible price they could charge and still have spaces available on every block. So that's different prices at different times of the day and at different locations, but I think if they aim for this policy, if they've chosen the lowest price they can charge and still have available spaces, it means if they go any lower, all the spaces will be filled and people will say there's no place to park. And if they go higher than that, there will be a lot of vacant spaces. Some of the supply will be mismanaged. 

How important are Community Benefit Districts for selling parking reform to the public?
Well, I think it is the key to getting political support. As you probably know, Redwood City has this policy and Ventura in Southern California, they just started it. From the merchants' point of view, they think that the revenue return is the most important part of the entire policy. They realize that it's going to cut down on cruising and maybe greenhouse gas emissions, but the important thing to them is seeing improvements right in front of their businesses. Without that it seems to be hard to support the idea.

It's also true in Washington DC. They installed it around a new ballpark and they returned 75 percent of the revenue to the metered districts. And this can be for transportation improvements. I think that something visible and sharing with the community is very important. If they don't do that it's hard to show and prove and have pictures of the benefits.  

I think it's important for getting people to understand the workings of the program. I don't think the community benefit district will change anything about the right price for parking. I do, however, think they will make the policies seem much more reasonable to everybody. If they use the money to make sidewalk improvements, one of the most important transportation pieces of infrastructure in San Francisco. I think the sidewalks are almost as important as the bus system. If they said we'll use some of the money to improve the sidewalks and the streetscapes on the metered streets, everybody would see that the city is giving back something and not just taking. I think if you give back something that's very visible and very valuable, the metered communities will see the benefits right in front of their eyes. Everybody wants better bus service and more frequent bus service, but that's hard to see, especially if you're a struggling merchant. I think that it's easy to see very clean sidewalks, very well-policed sidewalks in front of your restaurant, rapid responses to any cracks in your sidewalks, maybe much more frequent cleaning.

Some businesses complain that extending meter hours or raising rates will drive customers away, that they'll go to suburban malls where parking is plentiful and free. How do you contend with that assertion?
You have to emphasize that the pricing is to keep the spaces almost entirely, but not quite, full. So you can't say the people are being chased away if almost all the spaces are full almost all of the time. You just wonder, where are they being chased? For the businesses, the important thing is that people are being chased away because the spaces will be occupied, but they will be occupied by people who will be willing to pay for parking if they can easily find a space.

If I were a waiter working in a restaurant, who do you think would leave a bigger tip, someone who will come only if they can find a free parking space after they have driven around long enough to find it, or someone that who is willing to pay for parking if they can easily find a space? I think the person that is willing to pay for parking is more willing to leave a bigger tip or pay more at a store or bring more business to the area than somebody who wants to be a freeloader and just won't come to your neighborhood unless they can get free parking. When you think about it, the kind of customers you're going to get is probably a little bit more free-spending if they can easily find a space and they're willing to pay for parking.  

In terms of the economics of it, Old Pasadena simply took off economically the year they installed meters. The sales-tax revenue is about six times higher than it was when they put in the meters in 1992. That is because, at least in Old Pasadena, the meter money has greatly improved the public infrastructure of that neighborhood. In San Francisco, they're talking about using most of the money for public transit, so there won't be the physical improvements. You're probably attracting a more free-spending group of customers and maybe more carpools, because they'll be splitting the cost of the curb parking. Maybe two dollars an hour won't seem like such a punitive payment if there are four people in the car and they're staying in an area for four hours. The solo driver will object to paying for parking. But if I were a business person, I'd rather see the cars arriving with four people in them rather than one.

What should San Francisco, or any city trying to reform parking policy, do about time limits?
The other thing I think that San Francisco is doing and that Redwood City did and that Ventura has done is eliminate any time limits on the meters. They removed the time limits and they rely on pricing to create turnover and vacancies and this has been the most popular part of the policy in Redwood City. People now don't have to worry -- a driver and three friends want to go for dinner some place and they park -- they don't have to worry that they have to get back to their meter in an hour or two hours. Whatever they're doing, they don't feel like they're pushed around so much by the city.  It still creates a lot of turnover because the price is higher, but the user is more in control of their life than when somebody who manages meters says you can only stay here for an hour or two hours.

The advantage of using prices to manage parking is that you don't need to have these arbitrary time limits. I think when people say they're going to run meters in the evening, it seems ridiculous because people want to park once and walk around for the evening. Turnover is not important for that, but pricing is important to make sure that some of the spaces remain available. So I would say that whenever you talk about running the meters in the evening, you have to say there's no time limit on them. You can put enough money in to stay for the entire evening, park once and go to dinner, a movie, a bar, and then walk around for as long as you want. You have to break this automatic assumption that a meter means that you have to leave in an hour or two hours.

If you were the head of the MTA, what would you do with the study, how would you adjust the meters?
I don't think you want someone from Los Angeles telling you [what to do in San Francisco].

What does seem to be happening in San Francisco is the MTA itself seems to be like the revenue recipient who has a political incentive to set the meter rates higher. They act like businesses in smaller areas, in the sense that they're the political force behind this. They're like a big interest group who happens to receive the revenue.  I think it's because of the fact that the MTA gets the revenue that this whole thing is happening. Somebody who is politically powerful and has a legitimate claim on the revenue and they use it for very valuable purposes and they want the money. So I think it's worked out fairly well in San Francisco. If the meter money went into the general fund, rather than the MTA, I don't think we'd be having this conversation.

I think they should run [the meters] until there's no need to run them. Some places they might have to run 24-hours a day if the spaces would be full otherwise. But they should be the lowest price they can charge and they should eliminate the time limits. If at 3 am, all the spaces are full, the price is too low. But if at eight in the morning three quarters of the spaces are empty, the price is too high. I don't think anybody should say it will stop at midnight or it will stop at 10 or 9 or 8. It just depends on what happens if you stop charging. As you know, it's a mess in San Francisco, the traffic is congealed with cars circling the blocks in some parts of the city.

In the MTA study, during metered hours, Columbus Avenue had 71-81 percent occupancy.  Does that mean the meter prices are too high?
Yes, I think it's quite common for meter prices to be too high, especially in the morning. Definitely on some days and at some hours the prices will definitely come down. 

Is 85 percent occupancy target a firm benchmark? Are there situations where you want more or less occupancy?
Well, it's short-hand. It just means you shouldn't have too much of an hour that is totally full. You shouldn't have much of an hour that is less than 70 percent, but somewhere around 85 percent. Sometimes it's going to be higher and sometimes its going to be absolutely full. What you'll see is variation around 85 percent, but I think what you mainly want is to make sure it isn't full more than 10 or 15 minutes out of any hour.

The recommendations in the MTA's new parking study, which Streetsblog reported on yesterday, are designed to make it easier for customers to find a place to park when they visit businesses on evenings and Sundays. The study comprehensively examines the demand for parking in all of the city's major commercial districts, aiming to extend meter hours only when and where demand overwhelms the number of available spots. If the MTA doesn't act quickly and strategically to sell the changes to businesses, however, the study's great promise could be overwhelmed by protests from merchants who don't yet see how the plan will benefit them.

"It gives the city more opportunity to just sting the patrons," said Dallas Udovich, president of the Taraval Parkside Merchants Association, and owner of Oceanside Sheet Metal.

In interviews with business owners and merchant associations across the city, it's clear the MTA has a big task ahead of it: conveying to merchants that extending meter hours beyond 6 p.m. on weekdays and Saturday, and adding enforcement on Sundays, will ultimately make it more convenient for their driving customers to park.

"I hope the MTA moves very cautiously on this whole issue and they had better do their homework, or there will be a revolt similar to what happened in Oakland," said Ken Cleaveland, Director of Government and Public Affairs for the San Francisco Building Owners and Management Association.

The MTA, though, is now armed with a formidable body of data collected during a 90-day citywide study period that it hopes to distribute as widely as possible. The agency did a considerable amount of outreach, conducting informal interviews with many merchant associations, business owners, residents, and neighborhood groups. Among residents, forty-two percent supported weeknight meter enforcement completely, and an additional 15 percent supported it if certain conditions are met, compared to 40 percent who opposed it. A total of 42 percent of residents supported Sunday enforcement completely or conditionally, compared to 52 percent who said "no." While the numbers supporting the changes may seem low, the figures actually exceeded the agency's expectations.

Christopher Duderstadt, who owns Christopher Duderstadt Machine Design near 10th Avenue and Irving Street, said it's important merchants take a closer look at the study. "I can understand how merchants that didn't understand the study would say, 'well, people aren't going to come to my business if they don't have free parking,'" he said, "[but] the reality is, people can't come to their business if there's no parking."

Representatives from merchant groups and community benefit districts (CBDs) in the Castro, the Mission, Noe Valley and North Beach all had concerns about the plan, including impacts on customers and residents. Several also felt the MTA should focus first on tackling disabled parking placard abuse. Since many of the groups Streetsblog talked to were interviewed by the MTA during the study process, some of their biggest concerns were already addressed in the plan, including extending meter time limits on weeknights and Sundays to four hours, and extending weeknight hours on a per-district basis, depending on demand, instead of increasing enforcement to 10 p.m. across the city.

Though many business groups cited concerns about the plan's impact on residents, Duderstadt said the study strongly suggests that residents will benefit as well. "One of the criticisms of the study is what would be the impact on the neighborhood, would it push commercial customers into the neighborhood? [The MTA] would argue it works just the other direction: if you provide an open space per block, people don't circle the block," causing congestion as visitors look for spots on residential streets.

Click to expand: Many of the city's most popular retail streets are overwhelmed with drivers looking for parking spaces on Sundays. Download PDF here.

In Union Square, the study found on-street parking is scarce at nearly any hour. Linda Mjellem, a spokesperson for the Union Square Association, said she'd welcome a program that encourages drivers to use the existing off-street parking structures, which are often far from full. In fact, the study recommends "[reducing] hourly meter rates in SFMTA parking lots when and where parking occupancy does not exceed 60 percent," in conjunction with expanding meter hours, which might ultimately nudge drivers toward the structures.

Mjellem touched on an approach that the city has been more open to recently: temporary pilot programs. "I like that they've been willing to pilot some things, and not fix them in cement," said Mjellem. She hadn't discussed the plan extensively with her organization yet, but speaking on her own behalf, Mjellem said she "probably would be open to a pilot" of the parking plan.

Several other merchant associations were similarly wary but not doggedly opposed, leaving the MTA with a crucial window of time to make its case. Stephen Adams, president of the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro, said his group is opposed to any meter enforcement extensions, but could probably live with the longer hours on weeknights. On Sundays, he said, parking isn't a big problem.

Indeed, many merchants said they don't think parking availability is a big issue on evenings and Sundays. The survey results in the MTA's study suggest otherwise, however, as occupancy rates indicated that customers in many districts are struggling to find spaces more than ever when the meters shut down. That may seem like common sense, of course, to anyone who's ever tried to find a parking spot near Clement Street after 6 p.m. or on a Sunday morning for dim sum.

One strategy for winning over businesses might be to do what parking guru Donald Shoup suggests: funnel parking revenue back to the neighborhoods it comes from. Even if a small portion were allocated to maintaining and improving local business district streetscapes, the perception of the plan as a revenue grab by the MTA could change drastically.

"What they should do is give 10 percent of the profits from doing that back to the CDBs, since we're doing the services that the city should be doing," said Debra Niemann, community representative for the Noe Valley Association CBD. "The least you could do is give some of it back." While Niemann is generally opposed to extending parking hours, she said such a change would cause her to drop her opposition.

Asked by Streetsblog about directing some funds to CBDs, or even pairing Muni service improvements to areas where meter hours would be extended, MTA executive director Nat Ford didn't rule out the possibility, but said it's beyond the scope of the study.

"I don't know if we're prepared to answer that at this juncture," said Ford. "The way we've always looked at this whole process is to not make it a neighborhood or political discussion in terms of this study. This study really just looks at the clear data in terms of occupancy, on availability for parking, and the business activity based on hours. It really didn't look at certain areas and whether those investments would go back into those particular areas. That's pretty far down the line in terms of this discussion."

Photo: Bryan Goebel

MTA Chief Nat Ford, at a reporters' round table today, released the long-anticipated parking study conducted by his agency to measure the traffic impacts of increasing parking meter hours on weekday evenings and on Sundays [Summary PDF] [Full Study PDF].

The study recommends that the agency extend parking meter hours in specific commercial districts on Sundays and until as late as midnight in some districts on weekdays when parking occupancy is over 85 percent or businesses are open. This would be done on targeted commercial corridors and would not be a blanket application across all of the more than 25,000 metered spaces the MTA manages.

"We've moved away from a blunt instrument to something that is much sharper and based in data that is pretty straight forward," said Ford, referring to a previous proposal to extend meter hours to 8 pm citywide.

MTA CFO Sonali Bose explained the details of the study, which compiled numerous customer intercept surveys, business interviews, and massive data gathering at meters across the city. Bose said that San Francisco parking policies haven't been significantly updated for decades and many of the meter hours are based on a time when fewer businesses in the city were open late on weeknights or on Sundays.

One of the more interesting findings in the study was that the vast majority of people don't drive to shop. Intercept surveys found data consistent with previous San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) studies that roughly three quarters of shoppers walk, take transit, or ride a bike to do their shopping. Further, for businesses that are worried increasing meter rates would drive away customers, the study notes that increased turnover is good for business. For instance, extending parking meter hours would allow 12 cars to park in one space, instead of seven, a 71 percent increase in potential customers.

When and how the study's proposals will be implemented is not certain. In response to a question about the timeline for rolling the study out, Ford said there was none.

"Right now, the only timeline we can truly bank on is October 20th, presenting this at the MTA Board," said Ford. "Based on what we get back, both formally and informally in terms of support or opposition, then we'll start building a schedule in terms of implementation. Or maybe this is a discussion and implementation is something that is discussed more earnestly in terms of next year's budget."

Although Ford and Bose tried to explain the MTA's parking study is different from the situation in Oakland because it is based on hard data and good parking policy, and because increased revenue would support transit, Oakland parallels were ubiquitous.

"I hope that the MTA leadership has taken heed of what happened in Oakland and will think twice about extending meter hours in this recessionary time," said Ken Cleaveland, spokesperson for the Building Owners and Management Association (BOMA). "Let's delay that conversation for a later date."

MTA Board Chairman Tom Nolan countered that Oakland and San Francisco should not be equated. "I think everyone is taken aback by the strong and effective rebellion in Oakland. But this is a transit-first city,"  said Nolan, who reiterated the dire financial situation the MTA faces with the budget deficit, which he estimated at $30 million.

When pressed whether the MTA Board would stand up to Mayor Gavin Newsom if it believed extending meter hours was better for the MTA and the city, Nolan admitted the board hadn't opposed the mayor "really in much of anything." But, he added, "We keep turning down revenue options, if it's not going to be on the revenue side, it's going to be on the service side."

Supervisor John Avalos was concerned that Mayor Newsom was more concerned with bad publicity than with balancing the MTA budget. "
I believe the mayor's office is not thinking about what's best for the city and trying to ward off possible outcry that could result from people opposed to the changes."

He added, "I think [the MTA] came forward with this despite the pressure because they have a huge hole to fill. They have a growing budget deficit that they need to move on. To not do that would be irresponsible."

Vowing to push the MTA to action if the Mayor and Board President David Chiu did not, Avalos said, "I will do what I did last May, trying to push for the MTA to be funded by different funding streams, including reducing subsidies for drivers."

Parking Study in Detail

Click to enlarge. Download PDF here.

• 3rd Street in Bayview would add Sundays, but evening hours would end at 6 pm, as they do currently
• Parts of the Financial district and parts of Mission Street in the Excelsior, West Portal, Taraval, Irving, Balboa, and parts of Geary and Clement in the Inner Richmond would add Sundays, with evening hours until 6 pm Monday through Thursday and 9 pm Friday and Saturday
• Most of SoMa, Hayes Valley, Civic Center, Parts of Chinatown, Union Street, and parts of Geary and Clement in the Outer Richmond would add Sundays, with evening hours until 9 pm Monday through Thursday and midnight Friday and Saturday
• Inner Mission and Valencia Streets, Upper Market Street, parts of Castro, Inner Geary, parts of Chinatown, Columbus Avenue, and parts of Fisherman's Wharf not operated by the Port would add Sundays, with evening hours until midnight Monday through Saturday
  

The MTA proposal also suggests changing other parking policies to complement the increased meter hours, including:

• Provide four-hour time limits after 6 pm and on Sundays
• Provide option for residents to extend Residential Parking Permit enforcement hours to match or exceed meter hours
• Improve availability of MTA parking cards
• Reduce meter rates at MTA parking lots when and where occupancy does not exceed 60 percent
• Ensure that all metered commercial areas have tow-hour time limits.
  

The expected impacts and benefits from the proposal include:

• Muni customers: Muni will be faster and more reliable because of fewer unpredictable delays
• Drivers: Will have an easier time finding parking spaces and can park for four hours
• Businesses: Improved access to stores should support economic vitality; customers can park for four hours
• Residents: No net loss of parking spaces; residential parking demand will be focused in residential areas
• Environment/Safety: Less unnecessary circling will improve safety for all road users, save fuel and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
  

Grand Lake Theater owner Alan Michaan exhorts the public to "Stop the Parking Madness!" Photo: DigiAnt

Oakland City Administrator Dan Lindheim, despite his own admission it would contradict an existing city ordinance, instructed staff to make the changes immediately after the vote, while the council meeting was still in progress, prompting a hearty applause from an audience overwhelmingly opposed to the extended meter hours and increased meter rates. 

Angry residents and business owners as well as several chambers of commerce and business associations lined up one after another to decry the initial changes, suggesting that the increased rate and hours were the death knell to commerce in Oakland.

"We have heard enough from our merchants about the impacts of this parking to their businesses," said Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce Board President Sugiarto Loni. "I'm here to urge all the citiy council members, please don't defer any more your motion to roll-back parking meters from 8 to 6.  It's going to help the small business a lot."

The champion of cheap parking was again Alan Michaan, owner of the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland's Grand Avenue district, who claimed that his business was down 50 percent because of the parking regulations. Michaan started his testimony with an apology to city council members for his previous outbursts and the anger he leveled at them, though he continued with arch rhetoric and veiled threats of a recall vote if they did not roll back meter rates and time.

"People aren't coming to my business and my business is just one of many businesses that are being so affected all over Oakland," said Michaan. "This is not about my business any more, about whether my business survives or not, it's about whether Oakland survives or not. You've basically shattered my business and thousands of others all over town."

The aggressive ticketing is so "out of propriety," he claimed, it's leaving the city open to a class-action lawsuit. He also called on the council to forgive all parking tickets issued since July 1st and claimed that his critics would be humbled by sales tax revenue numbers when they were released:

I know some of you don't believe in what I'm saying, how major this impact has been on the City of Oakland and on businesses.  You'll find out in three months when the 3rd quarter sales tax results are going to be released by Sacramento.  And you're going to be shocked, stunned, and dismayed. Our customers are abandoning our city; it's not worth getting a ticket.  It's not worth paying the over-the-top price for parking. We're not San Francisco, we're not Paris or New York, we're Oakland.  We're already struggling with an image problem already.  Let's make our city succeed rather than be a catalyst for its failure --that’s what this is, a catalyst for its failure.

Though Michaan received tremendous applause from the audience, not every member of the public supported him. Max Alstott accused Michaan of bluster and political naivete and offered his support to council members who instituted the parking changes.

"I do not believe that you guys scared everybody out of Oakland's parking spaces, I believe Alan Michaan did by getting on the 6 o'clock news and telling everyone to be terrified of parking in Oakland," he said. "One of you ought to scold him for the level of invective he brought out here. You guys were accused of extortion for raising the fee from $1.50 to $2, but you were accused of extortion by a man who charges $3 for a small coke."

Councilmember Jean Quan, who chairs the Finance and Management Committee, said she and her colleagues went into the budget process in good faith and tried to apply equally painful cuts and revenue increases across the board.  She said the public didn't pay attention to the budget until parking, but she felt increased parking hours and rates were preferable to shuttering libraries and firing police officers.  She also warned of further budget deficits by January and hinted that raising parking would still be on the table, pending the citywide study.

Councilmember Patricia Kernighan, who was credited by her colleagues as leading the compromise and reaching out to concerned business groups, said that despite their good faith efforts to create a balanced budget across city divisions, they had failed. She apologized for not conducting better outreach and said, "People don't want to feel like we're balancing the city budget on their backs or that we're punishing people."

To sum up the sentiment of the evening, Kernighan read from an August 2nd post from trade magazine Parking Today's blog, which featured a story on Oakland's parking drama.

"Parking is the most emotive subject known to man. Screw with a person's taxes and you have a heated discussion, screw with their parking, and you have a revolution."

A study on the parking management and revenue implications of expanded meter enforcement, which Ford promised within 90 days, was initiated as part of a "compromise" in late May to prevent the Board of Supervisors from rejecting the MTA's 2009-10 budget. It has now been more than 120 days and the study has not been made public, although Streetsblog has spoken to sources who have seen a summary of the draft.

"The Mayor thinks it's the wrong time to make these moves," said Nathan Ballard, Newsom's communications director. "Right now, with the economy where it is, the burden on ordinary people for city services is already stretched to the max, and so he hasn't seen anything that convinces him otherwise. He's open to arguments, but he's still where he was."

Ballard said the study "is nearing completion" and would eventually be made available to the public. Judson True, the MTA spokesperson, said the agency is working to finalize it. "[It] will be a thorough effort based on sound parking-management ideas and extensive stakeholder outreach. We hope that it will elevate some of the recent discussions on parking."

The delay, however, is troubling, considering the pledge made to the Board of Supervisors, particularly BOS Prez David Chiu, who rescinded his motion to reject the MTA budget after receiving assurances from the Mayor the study would be forthcoming.

In an interview, Chiu pointed out, as he did during the budget crisis, that working class families and Muni riders were forced to bear four times the burden of what drivers were asked, in the way of fare increases and service cuts.

"Everyone agreed that a parking study would be done to figure out the fairest way to have car owners carry their fair share," said Chiu. "Given that it is highly likely there will be a more significant mid-year budget deficit, we need to consider all options before we consider service cuts to Muni and other public transit options."

After that exhaustive supervisors meeting May 27, Ford was asked by Streetsblog how he could promise serious consideration of extended meters given Newsom's adamant opposition. His response?

"I think that's premature at this point to assume that. I think, if we have a reasonable plan that takes into account all the impacts, I have found with the Mayor, as well as the Board of Supervisors, that they've been supportive of some of those suggestions we've made and in this case we need a little bit of time."

According to our sources who've seen the summary, the study affirms that extending meter hours is good parking management that will improve driver convenience and create turnover for businesses. The agency is said to have compared more than twenty commercial streets on Wednesday and Friday nights, and Sunday during the day, and apparently found that commercial districts across the city are seeing occupancy rates near 100 percent not long after meters are turned off. Streetsblog has been informed that the study found the problem is especially acute on Sundays, when commercial streets in the study areas see near total occupancy while the majority of the businesses on those streets on average are still open.

Cities all across the country leave their meters on much later than 6 p.m., regardless of the current state of the economy. Take Los Angeles: Santa Monica, Old Pasadena, and West Hollywood leave meters on until 2 a.m. New York City, Milwaukee, and Miami Beach, run meters until midnight. Denver, Las Vegas, and Washington, DC, run meters until 10 p.m. How is San Francisco going to be the most innovative parking demand-management city and implement SFpark if it can't even get the nerve to keep meters on as long as Bethesda, Maryland (10 p.m.) or Park City, Utah (8 p.m.)?

In a city with a stated Transit First policy and an MTA with the power to apply parking revenue directly to transit operations, there is no excuse to throw good money down the drain. According to our sources who have seen the MTA study's summary, increasing parking meter hours in targeted commercial districts would generate a significant amount of money for an agency that desperately needs any source of revenue it has available for transit operations.

Not only would killing the proposals amount to bad parking management, it wouldn't be responsive to the public's stated priorities. According to surveys from the recently finished SFCTA On-Street Parking Management and Pricing Study, respondents ranked price of parking spaces behind parking availability, flexibility, proximity and safety. While the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce has not been supportive of extending meters on weekdays, they would like the city to extend meter hours on Sundays. The Port recently extended meter hours until 11 p.m. and there is no indication businesses are hurting.

If the Mayor is nervous about a fallout similar to what has happened in parts of Oakland around parking meter times and fee increases, he should take the lead on the issue by brandishing a study based on substantial data and make the argument that increasing meter hours will free up parking spaces in commercial districts to improve business. What's more, unlike Oakland, the MTA would not lump the increased parking meter revenue into a general fund as a budget stop-gap, but would use the money to improve transit.

Mayor Newsom should embrace the MTA's study, let Ford and the MTA Board implement extended metering and help the agency find additional new sources of revenue instead of trying to quash some of the most important, sensible options on the table.

Oakland's electronic parking meters. Flickr photo: mlinksva

In late June, the council voted to raise the parking meter rates by 50 cents to two dollars an hour, extend weekday meter enforcement to 8 p.m., and authorize more aggressive enforcement. Those changes have angered some residents and sparked cries from merchants that the new policies are hurting business.

Several councilmembers were skeptical of the options presented for making up the $900,000 budget gap the rolled-back enforcement hours would create, and requested a more detailed proposal from staff members. "Without an actual proposal for people to speak to, it's hard to say that staff will just come up with something," said Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan.

The rejected proposal, presented by Councilmembers Jean Quan, Patricia Kernighan and Council President Jane Brunner, would have made up for the gap with a mixture of a crackdown on handicap placard abuse, installation of parking meters in new areas, money saved from automating payment at city parking garages, opening up some city garages for paid residential use at night, and selling ad space on the back of parking receipts. Staff would have been directed to come up with ideas to cover the rest of the gap, which was still estimated at over $300,000.

Everyone on the council was open to rolling back the enforcement hours to 7 p.m. or 6 p.m., but the resolution ultimately lost due to the uncertainty of the replacement funding. "I am not wedded to the parking meter times so much that I would be unwilling to let them be rolled back," said Councilmember Desley Brooks, who, along with Kaplan and Nancy Nadel, voted against the proposal. "What I am wedded to is a real budget that makes sense for this city."

The vote came after a long, sometimes heated public comment period with rowdy applause. 

"What kind of city government attacks its own residents in this fashion just to raise revenues?" asked Allen Michaan, owner of the Grand Lake Theater and the most visible leader of the parking protests. "Metering rates should be reduced to 50 cents an hour, to compete with our neighbors, or better yet, meters should be eliminated all together." Michaan also said meter enforcement should be reduced not back to 6 p.m. but to 5 p.m.

Michaan and others claimed they had seen huge declines in business since the parking enforcement changes were made in early July. Several members of the public did contest the notion that cheaper parking was the key to better business, however.

"Free evening parking doesn't actually help businesses," said Jonathan Bair, chair of the Oakland Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. Grand Lake neighborhood resident Ralph Cook said the council should look to the advice of UCLA parking guru Donald Shoup, and base pricing on demand. In one of the evening's few humorous moments, Cook was interrupted by Michaan, who wanted to announce that the parking lot across the street would be closing soon. "Can I have my Kanye West 35 seconds back?" asked Cook.

He was granted his 35 seconds of lost speaking time back, and evidently the council listened to his advice on Shoup as well: there was broad support for a long-term parking study that would incorporate demand-based parking. "A lot of cities are looking at parking and setting pricing on a demand basis," said Brooks, referring to programs like SFpark in San Francisco.

Kaplan called for a Shoupian approach as well. "If all the parking spots are full, making them cheaper doesn't make the problem better, it makes it worse," said Kaplan. "We need a real study that looks at demand modeling."

At their next meeting in two weeks, the council will vote on commissioning a 45-day study to identify principles that should guide parking strategy in the city, in addition to voting on whether to roll back enforcement from 8 p.m. to 6 or 7 p.m.

There was also agreement among most councilmembers that the anger about increasing parking enforcement originated from how the changes were made, not the changes themselves. "I think that what has made people the angriest," said Kernighan, "is the fact that we changed the rules and we did not properly notify people before it happened. They felt like they were being tricked."

Quan, who supported the initial resolution to roll back enforcement to 6 p.m. even without a full plan for covering the funding gap it would create, seemed to lapse briefly into skepticism about the uproar. "Whether it's true or not" that the parking changes have caused a major decline in business, Quan said, "it's what people believe. I can't tell you how many emails I've had from people." Then again, Quan said, "there's like 300 free parking spaces within a block of the Grand Lake Theater," which the city provided several years ago at Michaan's request. Quan said she wondered if the decline in business was partially "because of the publicity and the uproar" about parking fines.

"People all over the Bay Area think if you go to the Grand Lake Theater you'll get a ticket."

The City Council ultimately is placed between an angry group of business owners and the equally daunting menace of making cuts or finding revenue elsewhere. Even an offhand suggestion earlier in the week that the funds come from the city's animal shelter program was enough to bring in three people who spoke passionately against any further cuts to that program.

The reaction that even an offhand suggestion brought was an indication of just how hard finding money elsewhere might be, Kaplan said. "I think what happened with the animal shelter was very telling," she said. "Without an actual proposal for people to speak to, it's hard to say that staff will just come up with something."

The Grand Lake Theater. Flickr photo: Fragmentary Evidence

In late June, the council voted to raise the parking meter rates by 50 cents to two dollars an hour, extend weekday meter enforcement to 8 p.m., and authorize more aggressive enforcement. The council will vote tonight on whether to reduce enforcement hours, either to 7 p.m. or all the way back to 6 p.m. They'd also need to identify up to $1.3 million in new revenue or cuts to make up for the loss of additional parking revenue.

The chief voice calling for a policy reversal has been Allen Michaan, owner of the Grand Lake Theater, who has organized protest meetings at his theater to rally opposition from other businesses and residents. Michaan insists that the new parking rules are deeply harming business in Oakland and causing customers to flee to surrounding East Bay communities that have free parking. He's cited a drop in revenue of 25 to 30 percent at his theater as evidence that the new parking rules are killing business.

In spite of Oakland's dire budget shortfall, Michaan has insisted the city find another way to cover its budget gap. At a protest at his theater in late July, Michaan said he'd be willing to make cuts to the police budget instead, which is likely to be a non-starter in a city where crime is among citizens' biggest concerns.

Cuts are more likely to come in areas considered non-essential, like libraries, parks, or staff cuts in other departments.

Paula Ramsey, executive director of Friends of Oakland Parks & Recreation, said she's not worried that the council would make further cuts to parks, if only because they've already been so severely slashed. "They've already had such deep cuts," said Ramsey.

Then again, she added, "you never know."

Given the political steam that Michaan has built up, including a petition with more than 5,000 signatures in support of recalling the entire council, many elected officials have been hesitant to publicly support the parking changes.

Robert Raburn, who is the director of the East Bay Bicycle Coalition and has been involved with the Mayor's Parking Task Force in Oakland, said parking fees are a sound source of revenue, but the city did a poor job of communicating changes. "Either you're going to close some libraries, cut back on other services, or raise funds," said Raburn. "I think this is a very reasonable approach to take to gather revenue from a source that you've not been very innovative at gathering in the past."

Raburn wondered if any of the council members would take a leadership role on parking and defend the changes in the face of public opposition.

There was no sign that would happen as of Monday evening. Several observers from the City Council offices and advocate community noted privately that the political furor over parking had made a rationale debate about the changes' merits nearly impossible, for now.

That uproar may have resulted from the incautious way the changes were rolled out, with inadequate public outreach and notice. Prior to the vote in June, some restaurants were actually in favor of similar parking changes, but the botched implementation seems to have undermined that support.

The EBBC's Raburn sees irony in Michaan's role as the backlash movement's leader, since his theater has ample four-hour free parking in a city-owned lot across the street. Still, irony aside, the City Council will need to decide tonight whether to stand up for a policy that was rolled out clumsily, or retreat in the face of a popular uprising.

Oakland City Council vote on parking changes: 6 p.m., Oakland City Hall, 1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. Parking vote is item 15 on the meeting agenda.

A newly installed SFpark parking meter in San Francisco. The SFpark program was inspired by Donald Shoup's theories on parking management. Photo: Bryan Goebel

After the Oakland City Council raised parking fines and extended parking meter hours to help balance the city's books, some merchants raised an outcry. Merchants, lead by Grand Lake Theater owner Allen Michaan, said the new policies were hurting business, and threatened to recall the entire City Council if the changes weren't rolled back.

Shoup, whose market-driven parking management theories are the inspiration for San Francisco's SFpark pilot program, told the East Bay Express the merchants may have some legitimate complaints about how the city made the changes:

First, the council shouldn't be using parking meters as a cash register for its general fund, [Shoup] said. "You shouldn't set the price to raise money, but to manage supply," he explained.

Second, the council is micromanaging when it sets parking meter prices for every district in the city, he said. Instead, the council should delegate those responsibilities to city staffers who then set prices based on how difficult it is to park. As a result, it makes no sense for parking prices to be the same in busy districts, such as Rockridge and Lakeshore, as they are in less crowded ones. In addition, parking meter prices should fluctuate during the day, based on how tough it is to find a place to park. It makes no sense, Shoup said, to charge the same price at 8 a.m. when stores are closed, as at 1 p.m., during the height of the lunchtime rush.

The East Bay Express also notes that San Francisco is making some not-so-Shoupian moves of its own with the SFpark program, including sending all revenue to the MTA instead of funneling a portion back to the districts that it originates from for streetscape and other improvements.

Are parking meters to blame for Oakland's struggling economy? Flickr photo: mlinksva

Allen Michaan, owner of the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, wants to recall every member of the Oakland City Council. Their offense, he says, is raising the parking meter rates by 50 cents to two dollars an hour, extending weekday enforcement to 8 p.m., and authorizing more aggressive enforcement.

Since the new parking policies went into place, Michaan says his theater has seen "a dramatic decrease in business."

"I see our attendance dropping on a daily basis," said Michaan. "It's an attack on the community."

At a meeting of about 100 business owners and residents yesterday at Michaan's grandly restored movie house, about a dozen business leaders and another dozen residents spoke their minds about Oakland's recent parking policy changes. Many business owners started by expressing concerns about the parking policy's effects on their customers, and built up to broader complaints about Oakland's anti-business political climate, a lack of safety, and anxiety about losing customers to surrounding suburbs.

Calling the policies "anti-business," an Oakland real estate agent said Oakland should remove parking restrictions and make its new motto "You're free to go about Oakland."

Many of the merchants in attendance were skeptical about transit's importance to their businesses.

"[Oakland councilmember] Nancy Nadel was quoted in the newspaper today saying, 'well, if the rates are high, then people will stop driving their cars and they'll go to mass transit to the grocery store,'" said Oakland merchant Jim Forsyth. "That's like, who's her economic advisor, Britney Spears?"

"I'd like to see an old Nancy come up here with an artificial hip and carry three days' groceries home up these hills. It can't be done."

One resident, who did not identify himself, spoke in favor of the parking rate increases. "If you want to lower the rates and encourage squatting, go ahead, but the problem is you do it at your own peril," he said. "I encourage the city council, and I encourage you to think about this, that we raise the rates to a market level, so there's some available spaces for people to park."

As the man left the microphone, Michaan sought to counter his argument. "I have to comment to that. Sorry, why don't you go drive around what is now our deserted shopping neighborhood."

"It's a recession," the man exclaimed as he left the theater to a chorus of boos.

For Oakland to compete with surrounding communities like Emeryville, it needs free parking, Michaan said. "Perhaps if we had two-hour free parking everywhere … like Petaluma does, instead of $51 million in sales tax revenues, we might have $100 million in sales tax revenues, and we'd be $20 million ahead of the game."

"It should all be free. The most successful communities are those that have free parking," Michaan said after the open house.

Asked whether he considered San Francisco unsuccessful, Michaan noted that "San Francisco is a highly dense city."

"Look at how successful the business districts are in Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill, and that's a really good example," said Michaan, who believed increased sales taxes could pay for the lost parking revenue.

The Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce shared Michaan's concerns about the new parking policies. "We advised City Council that it was a bad decision," said Joe Haraburda, the chamber's president and chief executive officer.

In San Francisco, some merchants are beginning to favor extended meter enforcement hours, because it leads to greater turnover, as Streetsblog has written about before. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, though still opposed to congestion pricing, also likes the idea of extended enforcement for the same reason.

None of this seemed to matter to Michaan, who is asking fellow businesses to close next Thursday to draw attention to the issue. "Maybe if we had a successful recall, and we forced a new election, and a slate of progressive candidates stepped forward on the platform of, 'we want people to come back to Oakland. We want to have a reinvigorated community. We're going to have 2-hour free parking for everyone, and not charge parking tickets.'"

Michaan said he'd be willing to take money from the police department to keep parking rates lower, though security was a frequent concern for business owners at the meeting. Joe Martinez, who owns a liquor store owner in Oakland's Fruitvale neighborhood, said he even finds himself driving to the suburbs to shop because walking in his neighborhood feels unsafe. "I live within three blocks of Walgreens," Martinez said, "but I don't feel safe going there."

At a community meeting in the Richmond last night, planners from the San Francisco County Transportation Authority and Supervisor Eric Mar sought public input on the Geary Boulevard Bus Rapid Transit project - and sought to dispel some false rumors about it.

In a presentation that preceded open discussion, the project's lead planner at the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA), Zabe Bent, went over the major aspects of the project, including its benefits and plans for mitigating any potential negative impact on the neighborhood. Most of the information was the same as that presented at last December's scoping meetings, but planners and Mar sought to use the meetings to assure the public that BRT would not cause major traffic problems, and would bring worthwhile improvements.

Lead planner for the TA on Geary BRT Zabe Bent responded to questions and comments.

The Geary BRT project focuses on the section of Geary between Van Ness and 33rd Avenue, but Bent said there would also be enhancements west of 33rd Avenue, including high quality shelters, real-time info at all stops, and pedestrian safety enhancements.

Bent sought to preemptively address concerns about construction impact, parking, and diversion of traffic to parallel streets, the latter two of which are hot topics for merchants and residents since Geary BRT would convert a vehicle lane in each direction to dedicated bus lanes.

The public comment period initially focused on concerns such as how the project would be financed, why it wouldn't be ready until 2015 at the earliest, and the technical details of how express buses would pass local buses.

It grew tenser as the topic moved to the potential "spilling over" of traffic from Geary to parallel streets. Some members of the public were unconvinced by TA data showing that the traffic impact would be minimal, and at times Mar had to forcefully ask one speaker to allow Bent to respond.

Supervisor Eric Mar co-hosted a meeting on Geary BRT yesterday.

One merchant suggested that businesses should receive compensation to stay afloat during the project. Bent pointed out that the project was not on the scale of BART or light rail, and thus it does not invite comparisons. "Would you compensate someone for a street resurfacing project? No," said Bent.

Sometimes overlooked in the tension over the impact on drivers, however, was the project's potential impact on pedestrians. "As a pedestrian, the worst thing about Geary is crossing Geary," said one member of the public. Bent responded that pedestrian enhancements, such as bulb-outs and pedestrian refuge medians would improve the situation. In general, pedestrian and bicycle advocates were either less vocal or less abundant, and the discussion often was dominated by several people worried about accommodating traffic.

If advocates for livable streets are to be heard above the complaints of a few very vocal local interests, they will need to show up and be heard at future meetings. While the project currently includes many pedestrian enhancements, the pressure being applied on planners from the public is often coming from the opposite direction.

On the bright side, when the tense exchanges over traffic had died down, another resident offered her support. "As a bus rider, I'm really looking forward to the improvements on Geary," she said. "I love Clement and Geary Street, but I can't get friends to come out because transit service is not reliable."

Next up: Geary BRT Citizens Advisory Committee meeting. Thursday, July 30, 6 p.m. Meeting is at 100 Van Ness Avenue, on the 26th Floor.

Image: SFCTA

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority's (TA's) feasibility study found that Geary BRT would "improve travel times on the most congested part of Geary — Van Ness to 33rd Avenue — by 25% to 31% (7-8 minutes depending on the alternative) for 38L-Limited riders, and 41% to 44% (13-14 minutes) for 38-Local riders who choose to switch to BRT." The project costs are expected to be between $157-$212 million, including substantial intersection overhauls at Fillmore and Masonic.

"The Geary Bus Rapid Transit project will improve the efficiency and reliability to the most traveled bus line in San Francisco," said Supervisor Eric Mar. "We need community residents to work with us and City staff to ensure that pedestrian and street improvements also move forward with the implementation of BRT." 

The opposition to the Geary BRT project has come from several merchants along the corridor who argue that traffic will spill out into their neighborhoods with the vehicular capacity reduction that will result from a bus-only lane in either direction along Geary. These merchants have also expressed concern about the traffic and parking impacts during construction, though TA personnel involved in the project have pointed out to Streetsblog that construction would only happen two blocks at a time to mitigate the disruption to the surrounding area.

Zabe Bent, lead planner from the TA on the project, said her agency wanted to diffuse some of the untrue rumors about the project and explain the corridor-wide benefits, including those for pedestrians.

"We want to make sure folks understand what the project is and isn't," said Bent. "We heard people have been talking about a rail project that is coming imminently and that includes home takings."

Tonight's meeting should be interesting.

The meeting starts at 7 pm at the Richmond Recreation Center gymnasium, 251 18th Avenue between California and Clement.

[Updated: 2:20 pm]

By a unanimous vote, the Board indicated its support for the ordinance, though the supervisors reasons differed. The vote only authorizes creating a parking plan for Golden Gate Park, not its implementation, which the MTA will need to seek later.

The Recreation and Park Department, the MTA, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, and Supervisors John Avalos and David Campos have expressed strong support for the measure in the past, since it will generate funds for the MTA and the Rec and Park Department, and is consistent with the city's Transit First policy.

After yesterday's vote, Supervisor Sean Elsbernd said he still has "major reservations" about installing meters in Golden Gate Park, including the meters' aesthetic impact on the park. Elsbernd also expressed concern about whether the meters would "create residual parking problems" in surrounding neighborhoods, such as the Inner Sunset, the Richmond, and Haight-Ashbury.

Elsbernd said he also worried that charging for parking could drive park users away. "We want to encourage people to go to parks, we don't want to discourage," said Elsbernd. "I wonder if meters are going to do that."

Supervisor Carmen Chu, who represents the Sunset, also was concerned about parking spillover. Asked whether she could potentially support installing meters, Chu said, "to me there's still a lot of unknowns about what that would look like, what the meters would look like, what the rates would look like, how are we going to deal with disability issues, and also what the surrounding impact on the communities would be. So these would all be the things that I would take a look at when we have the report."

Chu did acknowledge that "there are some individuals who are unfortunately taking advantage of the park," and said the city "should think about what things we can do, what strategies when can do to address that issue."

She remained concerned about neighborhood impact regardless, however. "Whether it is a parker who is parking all day or a parker who is parking there for an hour," said Chu, "the impact of having parking meters installed inside the park will be that there will be an impact on the neighboring community."

Supervisor Eric Mar, while also sensitive to neighborhood concerns with parking spillover, called installing parking meters "a good way to insure that we have more promotion of the Transit First policy for the city," and said he's "open to parking meters in the park."

"I know that the pushback will come heavily in districts like mine, the Richmond District, and the Sunset, and a little bit in parts of District Five, so I'm going to be listening to residents, and trying to minimize the harm to the neighborhoods," said Mar. "But I think that in general, parking in a reasonable part of the park will insure that we have more public transit use. But I don't want to see kind of ugly meters in the park that destroy the environment for people too."

To limit the visual impact, the MTA has said it will use meters that cover 10-15 spaces each, with about 130 meters total.

The Board also gave final approval to putting the Safe Streets and Road Repair General Obligation Bond on the ballot for November. As we've written before, the bond measure would direct $368 million towards rehabilitating the city's aging streets and sidewalks, and would pay for streetscape enhancements, including enhancements to sidewalks and bicycle infrastructure. If voters support the measure in November, funding would be distributed over the next five years, with each issuance requiring Board of Supervisors approval.

Residential Parking Permit (RPP) zones. Courtesy: TA

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

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

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

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

The study recommends charging more for RPPs and adjusting them to better integrate with metered parking spaces. From the study:

The current RPP program provides benefits to a select group of parkers—those who store their car(s) on-street during weekday mid-days—and does not set an appropriate price level that recognizes the value and scarcity of on-street spaces. The price of a residential permit should be increased, and this action should be carried out in conjunction with restructured regulations that provide permit holders with a tangible benefit (e.g., extending hours of regulation, limiting overall permit supply, etc.).

Given the long time-frame of the study, parking management solutions like SFPark have come online and will test many of the recommendations in real-time, such as replacing individual meters with multi-space meters, improving variable payment options, adding directional signage with real-time parking data, and improving enforcement efficiencies.

One of the more politically interesting recommendations from the study is the Parking Benefit District (PBD), a Shoupian principle that would direct a portion of new revenues generated from increasing parking regulation fees to transportation objectives in the local district, such as improved sidewalks, transit enhancements, bicycle parking, etc.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, who initially bristled at the PBD proposal, which could add meters to residential streets around commercial districts to deal with overflow from the commercial destinations, seemed to concede the point if the metering decisions were left to neighborhoods where the districts would be established.

Giving control of parking pricing back to local neighborhoods, however, appears to contradict Proposition A's intent to depoliticize parking by taking control of traffic decisions from the Board of Supervisors and giving it to the MTA.

"The voters have made clear that parking-related revenue goes to the MTA and our transit system," said MTA Spokesperson Judson True, referring to Proposition A. "That makes complete sense because transit has to be an attractive alternative to driving for smarter parking management strategies to work."

Parking Benefit Districts In Detail

From the study: "As discussed throughout this report, pricing is the most efficacious means of managing on-street parking when occupancy routinely exceeds practical capacity. A (PBD) program could be made available to neighborhoods facing parking challenges, regardless of whether the neighborhood is currently covered by an RPP."

A PBD program would incorporate the following components:

• Allow neighborhoods to opt-in. Neighborhoods could elect (through an adopted administrative process) to create a PBD. If the neighborhood is currently covered by a [residential parking permit] RPP, the PBD would replace the RPP (or applicable portion thereof).
  

• Employ price-based regulation and associated elements. Variable pricing is necessary to effectively manage on-street parking in high-demand neighborhoods. New technology would be deployed to allow for variable pricing, user information, and enhanced enforcement. The hours during which parking is priced would be evaluated and modified as necessary. Conventional strategies, such as provision of loading zones, would be reevaluated and adjusted appropriately.
  

• Expand metering to areas with peak parking demands in excess of 85 percent. All blocks with practical capacity issues warrant price-based management. Expansion of metering into areas traditionally designated as “residential” could potentially be paired with an exemption for preferential permit holders (priced at higher than current rates, as discussed above) at all or some times of day.
  

• Provide parking privileges to preferential permit holders at an appropriate price point. Residents of the neighborhood would be permitted to purchase monthly permits for on-street parking on residential streets in the neighborhood. Permits should be priced at a high enough level to appropriately value on-street space and reduce demand for on-street parking (by encouraging off-street parking, reduced vehicle ownership, etc.).
  

• Invest a portion of net new revenues within the neighborhood and involve the community in prioritizing expenditures. This is the central element of PBDs. By pairing the PBD concept with price-based regulation there is even greater opportunity for neighborhoods to reap the benefits of pricing—through improved parking reductions and a reduction in traffic volumes, as well as through funding available to invest in local transportation projects.
  

• Recognize the limits of fully addressing peak demand in residential areas. In many neighborhoods, demand for overnight on-street parking is especially high. Overnight parking demand is likely to be managed to some extent by higher preferential permit fees, but even a price-based PBD program must recognize the limits of using price during very late hours when enforcement is more of a challenge. It is important to note that on-street occupancies in excess of 85 percent may be more tolerable during the late-night periods, when traffic volumes are light, and businesses and other.