potrero view
Courtesy of SFMTA

Courtesy of SFMTA

January 2012

Residential Areas Exempt from Parking Meter Plan, According to MTA Official

Keith Burbank

Potrero Hill resident Jim Wilkins wants to be sure that Hill dwellers don’t have to feed a meter to park in front of their homes.  Wilkins is circulating a petition to oppose a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) proposal to install meters throughout Dogpatch, Mission Bay, and parts of Potrero Hill.  He’d collected more than 500 signatures by the time the View’s January issue went to press.       

According to Jay Primus, SFMTA and SFPark manager, “there will be no parking meters in residential areas.” However, meters may be installed on blocks which include a mix of businesses and residences – as is currently the case in such neighborhoods as the Fillmore – particularly in Mission Bay.  Managing parking in San Francisco is “complex,” said Primus.

Primus said that SFMTA’s initial parking proposal was developed in consultation with residents concerned about parking congestion in Southside San Francisco.  “We’ve been meeting with as many people as possible...to refine the plan and make it better,” he said.  “For example, we met with someone who lives on Pennsylvania.  We are taking a look at every block.  If meters are proposed for an area that is inappropriate for meters, no meters will be put there.”  Blocks that are strictly residential won’t be metered.

“What’s motivating this [the proposal] are real parking problems,” said Primus, who asserted that parking in Mission Bay during the day is nearly impossible.  According to Primus, there are parts of Mission Bay where people park their car, and then travel to the financial district via bicycle or public transportation, leaving their vehicle in place for an entire day, at no cost.   This situation, said Primus, is bad for neighborhood businesses and for those looking for short-term parking.  SFPark is “zeroing in on a goal…that when a person is driving, they can find a place [to park] quickly,” he said.

Arkansas Street resident Rob Cohen is concerned about a potential SFMTA ban on new residential parking permit areas.  Primus conceded that while the draft plan contemplated prohibiting the creation of new residential parking permit areas “…that’s not practicable,” he said.  “So that language will be taken out of the plan.  That’s not part of SFMTA policy.”  To establish a new permit area there must be at least one mile of street frontage, at least half of the vehicles parked in the proposed area must be non-resident vehicles, at least 80 percent of the legal, on-street parking spaces within the area must be occupied during the day, and 250 signatures from area residents – one signature per household – must be submitted to the City’s Transportation Engineering department.

According to Primus, the plan will go through two hearings before it’s approved, the first of which has been scheduled for January 13.  The SFMTA Board will most likely vet the plan in February.  

Meters installed in Dogpatch and Potrero Hill would operate from “9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Saturday, just like everywhere else in the City,” said Primus.  “We had considered starting the price of the meters at $1 an hour, but instead we are considering a price of 25 cents an hour.  This is the absolute lowest price possible.  Our availability goal is to have one space open at all times.  We want to make it easy for drivers to find a parking place, so drivers don’t have to circle, or double-park.  Where we add meters, the meters will accept credit cards.  There will be no time limits on the meters.  It will be very easy to avoid tickets.”  By achieving these goals less vehicle exhaust will be produced, less fuel will be consumed, and drivers’ time will be liberated to accomplish what they came to do.

 

 Subscribe to The Potrero View

All rights reserved. Copyright © 2006 The Potrero View.

Content on this site may not be archived, retransmitted, saved in a database, or used for any commercial purpose without the express written permission of The Potrero View or its Publishers.