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Only people who can afford endless impound fees will "just park in the street". Realistically, if there is literally nowhere to park your car, you either get r

Only people who can afford endless impound fees will "just park in the street". Realistically, if there is literally nowhere to park your car, you either get rid of it, or you live somewhere else. SF could do with much better public transit and many, many fewer parking spaces that aren't in a multi-story garage.

michaelt 11y ago
Only people who can afford endless impound fees will "just park in the street". It depends if all the other parking in the area is restricted - the jargon I've heard is "displaced parking" and I've seen it in action. When a university near me raised parking prices, any road or grass verge or dropping-off point on campus that wasn't marked 'no parking' got cars on it. When those were marked 'no parking', they started parking in the customer parking of nearby shops. When the shops restricted parking to two hours, people started parking on residential streets further out. So the residential streets needed a residents permit scheme. Now, if parking is already extremely heavily regulated you might already have the street parking and customer parking and residents parking restrictions (and admin and enforcement for them) in place. But it's my experience that restricting the supply of parking spaces isn't always a simple matter.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Obviously these things take time to carry through. When you half the parking space, you don't suddenly half the amount of cars. Over time people frustrated with the parking, the fines for parking in wrongful areas and the walking distances when parking further from home, will sell their car, and over time fewer people who didn't have a car yet will buy one than they otherwise would in a world of ubiquitous parking. Gradually this reduces the amount of cars and displaced parking. If you build new housing without parking for new inhabitants, you don't have that inherent excess of cars per parking spot. You might have some excess still but not nearly as much. The biggest solution though is to offer alternative transport, first, and then removing, reducing or making more expensive the parking infrastructure. Here in Amsterdam the city has been removing parking and hiking up parking fees quite rapidly. But it was after establishing ubiquitous, separated, safe cycle paths everywhere, a decent tram, bus system and metro, 8 train stations (in a city of just 1 million) and another relatively high-speed underground light rail project in the works today, as well as public-transport's rentable bicycles and mini electric cars (which, due to sharing, is getting iirc about ~20 users for the space of one traditional parking spot). In Amsterdam I've never owned a personal car and won't ever need to. But having lived in America, I can't imagine that to work.
- simoncion 11y ago
  > It depends if all the other parking in the area is restricted... I thought we were talking about major and not-so-major cities; areas where there are mandates to install X units of parking per Y units of new housing. In places like these, unrestricted parking is almost non-existent.
cmurf 11y ago
Yeah but SF makes a metric f ton of revenue off parking fees and fines. So they'd need to dramatically alter their revenue sourcing to get rid of parking spaces.
- marincounty 11y ago
  Yea, I have gotten so many parking tickets over the years. 90 percent have been for overnight parking. You pay $2000 a month for a shitty room in a 50's cracker box house, and can't park your vechicle anywhere without getting a ticket? (Please save the Emergency vechicle egress excuses? My town happily accept $90 a quarter for overnight passes? And wide streets are treated the same as narrow streets?) Where I reside, you can't park your vechicle more than 30 min. between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Most towns I have lived in allow 72 hrs of parking, and then you need to move 300 yards. My town doesn't want to change the muni code because they make a staggering amount of Revenue. Theses parking fines/traffic fines are revenue fueled. I honestly wouldn't be upset but these fees account for income level. They don't. You get a $38 dollar parking ticket, or a dubious $500 traffic violation--it's a setback for low income residents. Why couldn't you send in a copy of your 1040's, and have your parking violation adjusted to realistic amounts? As to living, working, having a life, while living in the suburbs; you need a vechicle. You need to park the vechicle somewhere? Not all of us can just jump on public transportation(our public transportation is so slow, so spotty, I can get to most places in my county faster by riding my bike. (My employer doesn't like sweat soaked employees though, nor do Judges in Jury duty), or have the income to take Uber/Taxis everywhere. My point is some of still need a automobile. Yes, we need parking rules. Fees/fines should not unreasonable? At least that's what I thought that constitution, the one one really cares about, said?
  - simoncion 11y ago
    Honestly, if you're not working an entry-level job, you should be able to negotiate car storage and/or work transportation arrangements with your employer. There are towns that use fines and citations as a source of revenue. If you live in one of those towns, and don't like the practice, agitate to have that practice changed. (Yes, I know that this is often somewhere between very goddamn hard and all-but-impossible.) I am disinterested in responding to the rest of your comment. :)

michaelt 11y ago

Only people who can afford endless impound fees will "just park in the street". It depends if all the other parking in the area is restricted - the jargon I've heard is "displaced parking" and I've seen it in action. When a university near me raised parking prices, any road or grass verge or dropping-off point on campus that wasn't marked 'no parking' got cars on it. When those were marked 'no parking', they started parking in the customer parking of nearby shops. When the shops restricted parking to two hours, people started parking on residential streets further out. So the residential streets needed a residents permit scheme. Now, if parking is already extremely heavily regulated you might already have the street parking and customer parking and residents parking restrictions (and admin and enforcement for them) in place. But it's my experience that restricting the supply of parking spaces isn't always a simple matter.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Obviously these things take time to carry through. When you half the parking space, you don't suddenly half the amount of cars. Over time people frustrated with the parking, the fines for parking in wrongful areas and the walking distances when parking further from home, will sell their car, and over time fewer people who didn't have a car yet will buy one than they otherwise would in a world of ubiquitous parking. Gradually this reduces the amount of cars and displaced parking. If you build new housing without parking for new inhabitants, you don't have that inherent excess of cars per parking spot. You might have some excess still but not nearly as much. The biggest solution though is to offer alternative transport, first, and then removing, reducing or making more expensive the parking infrastructure. Here in Amsterdam the city has been removing parking and hiking up parking fees quite rapidly. But it was after establishing ubiquitous, separated, safe cycle paths everywhere, a decent tram, bus system and metro, 8 train stations (in a city of just 1 million) and another relatively high-speed underground light rail project in the works today, as well as public-transport's rentable bicycles and mini electric cars (which, due to sharing, is getting iirc about ~20 users for the space of one traditional parking spot). In Amsterdam I've never owned a personal car and won't ever need to. But having lived in America, I can't imagine that to work.
simoncion 11y ago
> It depends if all the other parking in the area is restricted... I thought we were talking about major and not-so-major cities; areas where there are mandates to install X units of parking per Y units of new housing. In places like these, unrestricted parking is almost non-existent.

cmurf 11y ago

Yeah but SF makes a metric f ton of revenue off parking fees and fines. So they'd need to dramatically alter their revenue sourcing to get rid of parking spaces.

marincounty 11y ago
Yea, I have gotten so many parking tickets over the years. 90 percent have been for overnight parking. You pay $2000 a month for a shitty room in a 50's cracker box house, and can't park your vechicle anywhere without getting a ticket? (Please save the Emergency vechicle egress excuses? My town happily accept $90 a quarter for overnight passes? And wide streets are treated the same as narrow streets?) Where I reside, you can't park your vechicle more than 30 min. between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Most towns I have lived in allow 72 hrs of parking, and then you need to move 300 yards. My town doesn't want to change the muni code because they make a staggering amount of Revenue. Theses parking fines/traffic fines are revenue fueled. I honestly wouldn't be upset but these fees account for income level. They don't. You get a $38 dollar parking ticket, or a dubious $500 traffic violation--it's a setback for low income residents. Why couldn't you send in a copy of your 1040's, and have your parking violation adjusted to realistic amounts? As to living, working, having a life, while living in the suburbs; you need a vechicle. You need to park the vechicle somewhere? Not all of us can just jump on public transportation(our public transportation is so slow, so spotty, I can get to most places in my county faster by riding my bike. (My employer doesn't like sweat soaked employees though, nor do Judges in Jury duty), or have the income to take Uber/Taxis everywhere. My point is some of still need a automobile. Yes, we need parking rules. Fees/fines should not unreasonable? At least that's what I thought that constitution, the one one really cares about, said?
- simoncion 11y ago
  Honestly, if you're not working an entry-level job, you should be able to negotiate car storage and/or work transportation arrangements with your employer. There are towns that use fines and citations as a source of revenue. If you live in one of those towns, and don't like the practice, agitate to have that practice changed. (Yes, I know that this is often somewhere between very goddamn hard and all-but-impossible.) I am disinterested in responding to the rest of your comment. :)