How it works

Today I went back to SF Park after having checked the "How it works" link I found there a few weeks ago. The parking situation is being documented now and while the results are imperfect I want to say that this is a positive development.

However, it isn't with out its critics. When SF Park was originally developed there were a series of articles in the SF Chronicle (S.F. releases details..) which described how the plan was going to be unveiled. Reading the comments for many of these I was able to get a good idea of how the more vociferous felt.

Many of the comments are obviously without merit, such as the goofy one from "Emperor Norton" himself and at least four comments attacking the ideological commitments of local politicians. Likewise those opposed to the "flexible parking" as some like to call the idea behind SFPark made a number of comments that were simply untrue. However, there were other comments that said things about bicyclists and cops which seemed on point but would have been better placed elsewhere since SFPark is about cars and enforcement is not a police matter.

The the largest number of comments concerned bureaucratic bungling, the dishonesty of Nathanial Ford and the bloated payrolls of public officials which requires a more thorough review than the above described comments. This is primarily because many viewers seem to believe that San Francisco's parking problem is linked to corruption in government. While I am not necessarily going to contest this viewpoint, I am wondering whether these types of comments really belong in an article which is basically meant to review the steps that the city is going through to implement a new and innovative parking policy.

After reading through the majority of comments, I was startled at two things. There were relatively few comments that really dealt with questions and concerns for the project and even fewer which actually supported it. However out of the few positive comments that I was able to find there were some readers who went out of the way to support the project. For instance, some took the time to read comments and explain that issues of MTA administration and bloated payrolls were issues that had to be dealt with in parallel with the implementation of SFPark. Others pointed out that making Muni more effective should be a part of the plan. Mostly what people said was that parking is a problem already in San Francisco and implementing anything at all would be a change for the better.

Other comments critical of SFPark were not as positive. For instance many were really concerned that this project would effectively be a tax on driving with many accusing the city of price gouging. Others attacked the empirical/ theoretical basis for the plan indicating that the project was simply too car-centric. One of the more noticeable comments concerned those who would choose to "game the system" with multiple comments indicating that handicap placards would multiply and their use would tax the city's already overburdened staff.

Many indicated that they had very little interest in visiting a city that would charge them exorbitantly for parking. They said that this program was unfair to people that had no other means of transportation, couldn't bike to work or didn't have the kind of money necessary to pay. Some of the bleakest assessments believed that this would only make traffic more terrible. Above all the consensus was that it was inevitable that the cost of parking in the city was going to rise.

In contrast, there were several comments which were hard to identify as being positive or negative. For instance, several comments indicated that they were certain that they would no longer drive in the city or to those districts which were affected by the new program, an outcome which is what the system was designed to create. Many also pointed out that while scanners may be monitoring our activities and placards may be a way to game the system, we already are being monitored innocuously via the internet and placards have been the subject of gaming for quite a while. Also, there were several comments which indicated that the parking problem is bad in everywhere and that every county needs to buy new meters and develop a system which addresses the problems in our urban areas.

I was especially surprised to find that very few asked questions about how the program was actually going to be rolled out. For instance one person asked, "Do the rates change while your car is parked?" This was something that I figure will be resolved as the program progresses- if i hasn't been dealt with already. Another asked what the alternative to this program, a question to which, unsurprisingly, no one had an answer. Finally, I felt that the most pressing question was, "How do people know the rate?" This is a major matter of contention since a number of people pointed out that drivers may be tempted to use the internet while driving or may be inconvenienced by the discovery that parking can at times be especially expensive.