Car Sharing

The first in a new wave of on-street car-share parking spaces are on the ground, kicking off the eventual roll-out of 900 spots planned by the SFMTA.

KTVU reporter David Stevenson is at it again, with a new report about reserving one on-street parking spot for car-share vehicles. With Stevenson's history of muckraking about lawfully helmet-less bicyclists, and a handful of re-purposed parking spaces, this sort of scandalous scoop is right up his alley.

The SFMTA's endeavor to reserve on-street car parking spaces for car-share vehicles has yielded complaints from some car owners who, ironically, decry the "privatization" of space currently used to store private cars.

Updated with new version of the map here [PDF].

About 50 on-street car-share parking spaces could be approved at an SFMTA engineering hearing tomorrow. That's your chance to write in, or show up at City Hall, to support a smart move by the SFMTA: placing car-share vehicles in convenient locations citywide, and putting everyone within easy reach of this alternative to car ownership.

With hundreds of on-street parking spaces around San Francisco set to become available for car-share vehicles, the SFMTA plans to charge companies monthly fees for the conversion of curbside spots that are normally free. So while companies like City Car-Share, Zipcar, and Getaround  -- which offer services that make it easier for residents to go without owning personal vehicles -- will pay up to $225 per month for reserved spots, private car owners will generally continue to pay nothing for the use of unmetered spaces.

Hundreds of on-street parking spaces across the city will be reserved for car-share vehicles starting in September as the SF Municipal Transportation Agency looks to provide more convenient alternatives to owning a car.

Update 3/5/13: This bill was finally approved by the Board of Supervisors.

Curbside parking spaces reserved for car-share vehicles could become much more widespread in San Francisco under a proposed expansion of the Municipal Transportation Agency's on-street car-share pilot program early next year.