Parking Permits

The SF Municipal Transportation Agency's embattled efforts to put a rational price on the city's car parking supply by expanding parking meters have led the agency to develop a document [PDF] that, for the first time, lays out its parking policies in one place. SFMTA officials, who presented a draft to the SFMTA Board's Policy and Governance Committee today, say the document is intended to clarify the agency's goals and make its parking management decisions more transparent.

For the first time in 15 years, Palo Alto's outdated parking policies are being reviewed, and planners will consider recommending sustainable parking principles in the downtown core to better manage the supply. The affluent Silicon Valley city has not had a comprehensive examination of its parking strategies since 1997, when it installed four color-coded parking zones downtown. There is a two-hour limit in each zone but all curb parking is free.

The SFMTA announced yesterday that it would no longer include areas of the Dogpatch, Potrero Hill, and Mission neighborhoods in its pilot expansion of SFPark after pushback from a vocal group of opponents.

The SFMTA Board of Directors approved several parking policy changes Tuesday, including a pilot program to provide residential parking permits for child care providers. The board also decided to end free parking for SFMTA employees and establish a 2-hour time limit for broken parking meters.

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) presented the results of the comprehensive parking study it started in 2006 to the Board of Supervisors today, fleshing out many of the parking management principles espoused by parking guru Donald Shoup in his High Cost of Free Parking and recommending a plethora of solutions for managing the curb more strategically (presentation PDF).

Why is San Francisco -- considered by many around the world to be a “progressive” and “green" city with a Transit First policy -- still debating whether to extend meter hours and parking enforcement, even in the face of a crippling Muni budget deficit? Didn't we merge Muni with the Department of Parking and Traffic precisely so policy decisions about management of the streets would benefit the operations of transit, bicycling, and walking?

Despite meeting for more than seven hours yesterday, the BART Board of Directors never managed to discuss the budget, in no small part because of the drama and theatrics of a public enraged about the shooting of Oscar Grant on January 1st and the release of an internal audit that found BART fails to award contracts to minority and female contractors commensurate with demographics and stated agency goals.