On Fri, Feb 17, 2006 at 06:34:16AM +0000, susan_e_vaughan@juno.com wrote:
1) Howard Strassner's $5.00 a gallon gas tax with rebates of $600 (monthly?) per household even to those who do not drive. Action item;
Let's spend about 10 minutes on this since we discussed it extensively before.
2) Discuss legislation we would like to see get passed this year to fulfill our transportation plank;
Here's an outline of my proposal: a) California Vehicle Code 22500(e) makes it illegal to park in front of ANY driveway, public or private: http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d11/vc22500.htm b) In SF, this is not enforced except on the request of a tenant or owner of the building, who must be a car owner and wanting to get in or out: http://www.sfgov.org/site/dpt_index.asp?id=13444 Not only do they admit to not enforcing the law, they put fake tickets on their website that residents are supposed to print out and put on other peoples' cars; several of these are linked from the page above. The assumption by DPT is that any car blocking a driveway belongs to a resident, but if a non-resident blocks a driveway the enforcement process can take several hours and results in major inconvenience for the resident as well as a large amount of DPT employee time (the employee has to wait for the tow truck to arrive, often for over an hour). c) There are ~450,000 cars (including trucks, vans) registered in SF: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/maps_and_data/datamart/stats/regveh.htm Assume there are on the order of 1-200,000 separate driveways; DPT probably has a better statistic, but this is probably not off by a large factor. d) Proposal: SF will sell a market-rate permit to block a specific driveway. The permits may only be sold to residents or owners of the property accessible by the driveway, but they may be transfered. The permit would look like a rear view mirror hanger with the address of the driveway to be blocked. It would need to be renewed every year. Average market rate in SF is at least $100/month; if 50,000 such permits were sold, this would raise ~$50 million in new revenue. Such revenue would be applied directly to MUNI, with the condition that fares and services be restored to (at worst) year 2000 levels. If $100 million in permits were sold, we could use the money to provide free MUNI service (as the overhead of fare collection and selling passes would also be eliminated). Since the permits are for a special privilege (not general use), they would be exempt from the price cap that normally applies to residential parking permits. The question is whether it would be legal to do this without changing state laws, 22500(e) and the supposed fare-box limit for public transit (but then, how do other cities, including Emeryville and Santa Barbara, legally provide free service?) e) At the same time, all enforcement actions that currently require a call-in from a resident (sidewalk parking, blocked driveway) would instead be enforced on sight. This would result in cleaner sidewalks, and a small increase in revenue (and a significantly greater savings in DPT employee time, as they would no longer have to wait next to the illegally parked car for a tow truck to arrive). f) The plan should be supported by drivers as it would result in an increase in the number of legal parking spaces (benefitting even drivers who wouldn't get the permits) and it would prevent strangers from blocking your driveway. Any driver who's had to wait more than an hour to get in or out of their garage (as is currently the case) should support the idea of enforcement of blocked driveways without having to call first.
3) Greg Hayes wants to come and talk about the Bicycle Plan Update. I'm waiting for a proposal from him.
15 minutes since we already promised him. I think we've spent far too much time on this relative to what we'll actually accomplish. JMC -- John-Marc Chandonia (jmc@sfgreens.org) http://sfgreens.org/