Parking

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.

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

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

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

Streetsblog is pleased to present the third episode in UCLA planning professor Donald Shoup's ongoing inquiry into whether the Cato Institute's free market principles extend to the realm of parking policy. Read Shoup's previous replies to Cato senior fellow Randal O'Toole here and here.

Transit advocates have joined a broad coalition of opponents mounting a fight against California Pacific Medical Center's (CPMC) long range development plan for its San Francisco facilities, decrying the significant increase in parking being proposed, and the attendant impact that will have on traffic, transit and pedestrian safety. They argue the increase in parking supply will induce more driving to already crowded streets and will deteriorate Muni service and cause conflicts with pedestrians and bicycle riders.

At the heart of the San Francisco Planning Department’s 328-page Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for CityPlace, sustainable transportation advocates have pinpointed one glaring flaw. In assessing the impacts of new off-street retail parking, the environmental analysis [pdf] concludes that building a 167-space garage will have the same effect on traffic as building no garage at all.

Another city, another would-be transit-oriented development undermined by a glut of parking. This time it's Newton, Massachusetts, where plans are underway to build 420,000 square feet of office space, 60,000 square feet of retail, and 190 units of housing at the Riverside terminus of Boston's Green Line, the highest-ridership light rail line in the country.