Thought we might be interested in some of these ideas. John Holtzclaw's comments are in capital letters through the letter (Howard Strassner wrote the letter). I have only glanced over this, I have not read it carefully. Sue
White Paper - Nearly Universal SF Curbside Parking Charges - First Rough Draft for Discussion 5-05 -HS
1) Why Nearly Universal SF Curbside Parking Charges would be good for San Francisco's economy and environment:
Global Warming and the proximity of Peak Oil production are becoming conventional wisdom. The price of gasoline is approaching it’s historical high, corrected for inflation, disadvantaging sprawl areas where every trip must be made by car.
Professor Don Shoup published his guide for parking planners - "The High Cost of Free parking" which includes a section on curbside parking fees from a separate paper "The ideal source of Public Revenue" [ELABORATE ON HOW THIS RELATES TO SF]
In order to protect our neighborhoods from outside commuter parking, the SF Planning Department has accepted the concept limiting the number of residential parking permits that can be issued in an area. See appendix A.
Voters recognized the need to limit parking by passing Prop E, which includes in SEC. 16.102. TRANSIT-FIRST POLICY 7. Parking policies for areas well served by public transit shall be designed to encourage travel by public transit and alternative transportation.
Muni needs additional operating funds and is proposing increasing meter rates in neighborhood commercial areas to $1.50 - $2.00 an hour. For spaces close to busy commercial neighborhoods, the revenue from one space might (with current time limits) might be: 300 days/year X 5 hours/day X $1.50 /hour = $2,250/ year. If we add Sundays and evenings: 360 X 7 X $1.50 = $3780.
2) List the Difficulties to implementing Nearly Universal SF Curbside Parking Charges: Sixty years of pro automobile propaganda leading to over 70% of SF households own at least one car and in general household with cars are wealthier than household without cars and are more likely to vote.
We are really trying to develop a method that extracts money from those who think that they should be able park at little or no cost to themselves. Our main purpose is to discourage car ownership.
3) Suggested Initial Possible Ordinance Types: (thinking with my fingers [WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?)
A) DPT for the MTA could form voluntary partnerships with commercial district organizations and neighborhoods, adjacent to the curb side parking space and share the parking income, after the initial cost of installing a meter is collected. DPT should install one meter for multiple spots when eight or ten nearly contiguous property owners on one side of a block or around the corner agree. The agreement should include: percentage of the gross parking revenue collected that is shared; parking fees and operating times. DPT should install the most lucrative meters first and have the right to remove a meter with sixty days notice. The first areas may have to be non-RPPP [THIS IS THE FIRST MENTION OF RPPP, SO DEFINE IT HERE] areas. These are lower income neighborhoods [HOW DO YOU KNOW?]. [These areas don’t perceive severe parking problems during the day caused by people from outside the area. These areas will not be very lucrative My hope is that these are neighborhoods where people will clean their garages or get rid of an extra car for a few hundred dollars a year. Here people with more cars and no property will hate the people with property and less cars. The MTA revenue from these areas will not be too high. CLEAN UP THESE. IT THIS TO BE AN OFFICIAL SC DOCUMENT OR HOWARD'S STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS??]
B) Since a property owner has no special rights to the parking space adjacent to her property we might consider Shoup’s suggestion: DPT could be allowed to install meters for multiple spots and share the revenue with the neighborhood to improve the commercial district and/or provide traffic calming.
C) If the meters are to be located in a RPPP area we may have to allow permit holder to park free (this will seriously reduce income) or DPT only installs meters where the RPPP area has converted to a limited number of permit areas The total of permit plus meter spaces could be determined by the area. Extra income from permits and meters could be shared for neighborhood uses - perhaps the many could be used for affordable housing with no parking.
We need more discussion.
Proposed Changes to Residential Preferential Permit Parking (RPPP) 5-05 -HS
Background: The Planning Code minimum parking requirement was established in 1955 in an attempt to preserve existing curb side parking for existing residents by requiring new residential construction to provide at least one new off street parking space for each new unit. Since then there have been some modifications. In some neighborhoods this did not work well because many curb side parking places were taken by visitors or commuters. Thus RPPP was established to insure that only neighborhood car owners could use the existing curb side spaces all day. RPPP works by DPT granting everyone who meets the requirements (has a car registered to an address in the neighborhood and pays a $27 annual fee) an annual permit. (The permit fee will soon be increased to $60 to cover the actual cost of administering RPPP. In some neighborhoods, this results in many residents still having a difficult time finding a parking space. SF has always protected the "vested parking rights" of existing residents and merchants.
Proposed Change: The DPT counts the number of curb side parking spaces in each RPPP area and only issues permits for - 95% of the available spaces. Parking consultants say that drivers experience parking difficulties when over 95% of parking spaces are taken. (Don Shoup says that this number should only be 85 or 90% to make it really easy to find a parking space.) This number, like duration, days and hours, could be set by each neighborhood. There may have to be some consideration of street cleaning. Every one who now has a permit can continue forever to get a permit for their current or new car. People move, get rid of their car or die and soon an area will have less than the maximum. When this happens, once a year in each area, the DPT should auction off the newly available permits. People could bid the annual extra fee (over the basic permit fee) that they are willing to pay for a parking permit which they will have forever.
People selling a house or condo could transfer their permit only for the remainder of the year. City Carshare cars could get permits no matter how many permits were out. If the extra fee is not allowed, a lottery or waiting list could be used to distribute permits.
Status: The Planning Department is proposing something similar to the above for their "Better Neighborhood" proposal for Octavia. Supervisor Ammianno’s offices did some work on this. The City Attorney had some problems with auctioning new permits - they say this is a tax and needs a vote of the people. I would say that this is a voluntary fee for service. The Planning Department wants this change because they want to build new housing units with less than one parking space per unit and neighbors have opposed that since 1955. If the extra fee becomes law half of the funds go to Muni and half goes to the General Fund per Prop ‘E’.
Benefits:
A) For existing residents: 1) They get a permit forever; 2) The permit is more useful because parking spaces are easier to find. Now parking spaces may be a long walk away after a long search. This may be unsafe for elderly, women or disabled.
B) For Visitors and Service Providers: 3) Parking is easier to find. This will help contractors and delivery trucks.
C) For Transit Users: 4) There are more operating funds for Muni;
D) For Transit Advocates: 5) There are fewer parking spaces and therefore lower car ownership and less driving; 6) DPT reports that they issue about 73,000 Permits a year down from a recent 80,000. If ultimately drivers are willing to pay $50 a month for 50% of these permits the City will collect about $24 million a year which would be used for transit and discourage car ownership.
E) For Pedestrian Safety Advocates: 7) There should be less parking on the sidewalks and less driving.
F) For Housing Advocates: 8) This will help reduce the requirements for off street parking in new construction and reduce the cost of housing.
F) For merchants: 9) There will be a few extra parking spaces in residential areas near commercial streets.
Why is the Sierra Club Involved? We want to reverse the unsustainable downward spiral in which the number of cars registered in San Francisco increases every year and these cars get driven increasing air pollution green house gases and impeding transit.
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