Parking Meters

An appeal claiming that the repeal of Sunday parking meters is an action that requires environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act is baseless, according to responses issued by the SFMTA and Planning Department this week.

The SF Chronicle printed an op-ed this weekend, written by the Republican-backed group that aims to "restore balance" on San Francisco's streets. And by "balance," they mean enshrining a status quo where cars, not people, get the lion's share of the public streets, in the form of more pavement and more traffic.

The backers of the ballot initiative to "restore balance" on San Francisco's streets are beginning to emerge. The "balance" they speak of would enshrine free parking and give over large parts of streets to cars.

Update: Avalos said on Twitter that his email was meant as a joke.

Clarification: California's coastline (840 miles) is shorter than the end-to-end length of SF's on-street parking spaces alone (900 miles). This post originally compared it to the length of SF's total public parking supply (1,451 miles long), which is actually longer than the United States' west coast from Mexico to Canada (1,360 miles).

Updated 4:16 p.m. with comment from Supervisor John Avalos.

A new app called "MonkeyParking" being tested in San Francisco has made the rounds in local media this week for its bizarre driver-to-driver payment system. Here's how it works: A driver leaves her car in a valuable parking spot and tells other app-using drivers that she is willing to move it for a price of up to $20.

The vast majority of San Francisco's street space is devoted primarily to moving and storing cars, and most of that curbside parking for private automobiles is given away for free. Most of the city's street infrastructure is not paid for by fees related to driving, so it is disproportionately bankrolled by those who don't drive, through general taxes. By any objective measure, the state of affairs on San Francisco's streets is heavily tilted toward cars and designed to incur minimal personal cost to drivers.

The SFMTA Board of Directors today caved to pressure from Mayor Ed Lee by removing Sunday parking meters, a move folded into its approval of the agency's two-year budget.