SFPARK – PRO


SFparkWill Create a Better San Francisco


BY PATRICK SIEGMAN O


N A RECENT SUNDAY, I DROPPED by San Francisco’sHayesValley neighbor- hood for brunch. The public parking sup- ply, as usual, was an overcrowdedmess.


On that beautifulmorning, the sidewalkswere throngedwith


shoppers and diners, the sidewalk cafés packed. Curb parking was full, not only on the main drag, but also on the surrounding streets,withmore cars double-parked, dumped on sidewalks, and left in front of fire hydrants.


SFPARK – CON


Is this the Future for Municipal Parking?


BY PETER GUEST J


UST LIKE EVERY OTHER CITY INTHE world, San Francisco has a parking problem. The pricing mechanisms are crude and, the city says, too much traffic is generated by people looking for a parking slot.


In a bold experiment aimed at trying to deal with the prob-


lems they perceive, city officials have come up with an initiative called SFpark, which will introduce a demand-responsive park- ing regime that aims to even out parking availability and so reduce search times and so reduce greenhouse gases. The city has about 25,000 metered spaces, about 250,000


free street spaces and about 105,000 paid places in off-street parking facilities. In total, there are just over 380,000 or so places where a car can be parked. The problem, as the city sees it, is that some streets are over-


subscribed, with drivers circulating to find a space while other streets have spaces to spare. Presumably, the observed behavior is because those drivers who are circulating want to use a space close to their destination, rather than have the inconvenience of walking fromamore distant but available slot. Funded mainly by the federal government, the SFpark proj-


ect will use technology to adjust charges according to demand and use pricing to redirect drivers away fromthe hot spots. Current charges are set between $1 and $3.50 an hour on a


Hayes Street near Octavia Blvd. on Sunday, August 1, 2010, with the privately-operated lot. Note the lot’s vacant spaces and the packed curb parking.


The privately operated and perfectly situated parking lot at


the heart of the district, however, sat half-empty. What explains this curious situation? It’s not hard to under-


stand. On Sundays, the parking meters are turned off, so curb parking is free.The privately operated lot, however, charges a flat rate of $10, and the other nearby off-street lots and garages aren’t free either. Unsurprisingly, the result is that curb parking is packed to


the gills and a remarkable number of motorists cruise in circles, clogging traffic and polluting the air, in search of the elusive free curb parking space. With surprising speed, San Francisco’s SFpark project


(http://sfpark.org) ismoving to change this. InMarch andApril, the city placed 8,255 parking occupancy sensors on streets in the eight SFpark pilot areas, including HayesValley. The wirelessly networked sensors –mostly inmetered spaces, but some in near- by unmetered spaces – are now transmitting data on parking space occupancy to the computers of the San FranciscoMunici- palTransportationAgency (SFMTA). The occupancy sensors, provided by Streetline Inc. (www.streetlinenetworks.com), are well-tested, having been Continued on Page 16


neighborhood basis. This means that in any given neighborhood where all the streets have the same rate, the most popular slots will be full with cars circling looking for a space while a block over there will be spaces to spare. The new high-tech plan will be tested in a limited area and


then rolled out across San Francisco. The city will install some 8,300 detectors in eight city neighbourhoods. Each is wireless and self-contained, and will send back occupancy information to a central hub. Detectors also will be placed in three control areas to allow comparisons. The central data hub will provide information to the public


on meter availability so that, in theory, drivers can check where spaces are available before leaving home, and by better planning, they can reduce parking search times and hence achieve one of the key stated benefits of the plan. The technology is completed by new single andmulti-spacemeters that will allow payment by cash and credit and debit cards. The philosophy of the SFpark experiment is simple. The


detectors will measure the demand in each street and the charge at the meters will be adjusted automatically in response to the demand, with the stated ambition of keeping about 205 of the spaces free.Again, this has the objective ofmaking it easy to find a space even in busy areas and so reducing search times and the concomitant pollution. The charges will be adjusted within a new range that has a


minimumcharge of 25 cents/hour and could go up as high as $6, nearly twice the current highest charge.That could go even high- er for special events such as baseball games. The plan is that the charge will be altered in 50-cent steps and re-aligned no more Continued on Page 16


OCTOBER 2010 • PARKING TODAY • www.parkingtoday.com 15


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