SF: Parking, MUNI, and Democracy
Parking is notoriously difficult in The City by the Bay; thus were born my ode to garages some time ago. This shortage is also the reason homes that offer a parking space are often more money, or why a home might be listed separately from it’s parking space, as in: condo, $550,000; parking, $50,000; safe harbor from the DPT, priceless. And this is not a situation that gets better with time. As more people move to the city, new development goes up, and MUNI gets (sorry) worse and worse, the number of cars competing for spots gets downright ugly.
I do mean ugly. Last night I was visiting a friend in the charmingly quirky Lush Lounge in Polk Gulch, a favorite area for late night adventure. But the same things that make an area fun to visit (crowded bars, drunken idiots doing embarassing but entertaining things, crazy people saying surprisingly wise things on street corners) also make them scary to be alone in after 2am, waiting for the bus to take you home. So, I drove.
After (not kidding) 30 minutes of looking, I saw someone pulling out ahead of me on Geary Blvd. I moved over and stopped my car a polite distance away from the driver’s car to give him ample room to exit. I put on my blinker to indicate I was waiting to pull in. In short, I did everything you are supposed to do in terms of the parking space code we drivers in SF live by.
Unfortunately, that code can also be a signal to someone less scrupulous. After all, I am basically announcing a spot is opening up in front of me. In this case, a small car and driver must have seen that signal, and drove up along side me. Seeing the generous cushion of space between my car and the leaving car as a clear sign of weakness, this small shark pulled in front of me and into the freshly emptied spot. I was shaking in fury- especially because the same thing had happened to me 9 minutes before on Sutter. I did not find another spot for another 15 minutes, at which time I was in such a bad mood that I needed 3 times the booze I would normally need. And I ask you, San Francisco: do you want your drivers needing booze?
We all know something must be done. 3 new measures (2 for parking, 1 for MUNI) on the ballot this November aim to cure what ails us. I want to explore them each here on the blog, since transportation certainly affects all of us who live or want to live in this fine city.
First we can look at The Parking Iniative. This one is denigrated most as “Anti-green,” as it is friendly to cars- sometimes even at the cost of MUNI, but on the other side does attempt to allieviate parking scarcity. Specifically:
- The Parking Initiative would increase the minimum downtown parking requirement from one to three spaces for every four units of housing.
Pro= if you live of work downtown, the pro is obvious.
Con=encourages a group of residents who would before be unlikely to have cars (no need to drive in such a dense area with strong public transportation service and most daily needs walkable), thereby increasing traffic in an already congested area and, ironically, taking away more parking spots from the rest of the city since now more cars are competing.
- Under current law, the maximum limit for parking space in office buildings is 7% of the floor area. It would loosen this requirement so that an office building with 500,000 square feet that currently has 189 parking spaces would have anywhere from 500 to 666 spots – or a 250% increase.
Again, the pro= obvious if you work downtown, but also if you shop or visit a doctor or any other service there. This could be good for the economy as now people who are repelled from spending time and money downtown are encouraged to do so. Could be easier for handicapped or elderly people who need their cars to get around and want to be able to get out of them once they arrive downtown.
Con=similar to the con above, especially considering the effect at rush hour if that many more cars are trying to make the commute home.
- Under current law, San Francisco has a “one-for-one” parking policy in the neighborhoods – a developer must create one parking space for every new unit of housing built. The Parking Initiative doesn’t change that, but forever sets it into stone .
Pro=The number of spots (1 for 1) is now protected forever, which guarantees that many spots- which most residents know is not a number we want to decrease.
Con= Neighborhoods cannot alter the number of spots, even in cases when doing so might might living there more affordable- and affordable housing is even more scare than parking.
- Parking Initiative would allow homeowners to replace a bus stop in front of their house with a driveway. The owner of a residential building of up to four units would be allowed to create a curb cut in front of their property, regardless of “any potential effects on transit stops, transit preferential street, bicycle or primary pedestrian street.”
Pro=being able to build a garage would be a dream to most residents in the city, increasing the quality of living as well as property value, and would get many of those cars competing for a spot to park at night off the road.
Con=possible impact on MUNI’s ability to serve an area, and the same “increase in property value” in an area where values are often already swollen might also further contribute to the lack of affordable housing. Also might impact bikers and walkers.
So where do I stand here? As I am typing this, I can clearly see both sides of the coin, each shiny in its own way. So all I am doing is showing you the coin: it’s up to you to decide if you call it heads or tails when you vote this November.
—————————————————————————————– Source for much of this information: http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=4731
