*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