How about equivalent to a fast pass: $45/month? But I really think it should be market rate. We should not be subsidizing car parking when people are lacking basic health care. And it's not neo-liberal rhetoric; it's radical rhetoric. It's the same philosophy behind the Reclaim the Streets movement in the UK. And walking freely on the sidewalk is an entirely different use of public space than placing private property on public space and prohibiting others from using it by force, with the cooperation of the police. The correct analogy would be building a house on the sidewalk, or a kiosk to sell trinkets, or, the worst example, parking a car on the sidewalk. Whether it's popular shouldn't be the only thing criterion we use. Besides, we can make it popular by building in exemptions for current permit holders and limiting permits to the number of spaces so that the program actually guarantees a space rather than just a hunting license for a space. It has to be popular because under current law it would be considered a tax not a user fee and therefore require a vote, probably two-thirds, of the affected voters. For details, see, http://livablecity.org/campaigns/res_permit.html. Dave At 1:05 PM -0700 6/16/04, Rob Arnow wrote:
How about suggesting it be raise to $200 a year? Or just say "increase"?
There is a big difference between MUNI, and "public space." Whereas MUNI actually requires labor to keep it going, pavement requires much much less. I'm not "usurping public space" by walking for free on the sidewalk, so lets not use neo-liberal rhetoric as a tool for justifying what is simply a desire to make it prohibitive to own a car. I think there are good reasons for this, but better to go slow and raise the fee to $200 a year, rather than $1000. This might be good policy but its not going to be popular.
Rob
-- Robert Arnow Design Studio www.robarnow.com 415-552-2229
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Snyder" <dave@livablecity.org> To: "Rob Arnow" <rob@robarnow.com>; <grns-sf-staff@greens.org>; "transportation working group" <transpo@sfgreens.org> Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 12:35 PM Subject: Re: Draft: Transportation plank
*Not sure how I feel about charging market rates for street parking. I'm not sure what market rate is but this seems a bit draconian, and certainly not popular. How about just increasing the fees?
As a Green, I'm certainly not a believer in "market rates" for their own sake. Let's analyze:
"Market rate" for Muni service would be a little more than twice the fare.
"Market rate" for parking would vary drastically by neighborhood, but in the Haight, say, it would be about $100/month, or, 50 times the current rate of $2.25/month. ($27/year). We subsidize car parking about 20 times the rate we subsidize bus riding. When you consider that city policies have forced the development of nearly a million parking spaces in this town, increasing supply relative to demand and therefore suppressing the "market price," you should note that even this analysis of car parking subsidy understates the reality.
At a minimum, these subsidies should be equalized. Better, to promote transit riding, we should subsidize Muni until it's free, paid for out of car parking fees. I think we should respect the need not to shock people who have arranged their lives around an unfortunately reasonable assumption of free private usurpation of public property (parking), so another way to deal with that is to exempt current permit holders from increased fees, charging only newcomers the higher fee. This would generate money much more slowly, but as people move out of the neighborhood, more and more permits would be subject to the fee. People normally take into account commuting and parking prices when they consider moving to a new neighborhood or house.
-- Dave Snyder
-- Dave Snyder