

Sell your S.F. street parking spot for $20? - kqr2
http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2014/05/05/sell-your-s-f-street-parking-spot-for-20/

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tippytop
So I'm waiting behind a soon-to-be (or not-so-soon) leaving car and some other
jerk with an app pulls up and claims it's his spot because he "paid" for it?
And I'm supposed to recognize this transaction and carry on? Yeah, right. Fuck
both these guys, he'll have to pay me 20 bucks not to break his taillight.

~~~
MichaelGG
Presumably the people creating this app have thought of this, seeing as it's
like one of the critical parts of completing a transaction. With a few seconds
of thought you can come up with a quick way to make sure it all works.

What might happen though is that if a car is about to leave and a non-paying
car pulls up to get in, the leaving car might decide to stay a bit longer
until a paying car gets first into queue.

~~~
georgemcbay
They might have thought of it, but there is actually no solution to it because
the non-paying person waiting for the spot isn't a player in the system they
are constructing and thus can't be relied upon to react in a predictable
manner.

"What might happen though is that if a car is about to leave and a non-paying
car pulls up to get in, the leaving car might decide to stay a bit longer
until a paying car gets first into queue."

Yeah good luck with that. I've seen near brawls break out when two or more
people thought they had "dibs" on an opening spot based merely on proximity
and some ill-defined rules. Introduce a money component into this and that
just raises the stakes on the rage response.

If I arrived at a spot where it was clear someone was ready to leave and
realized he was waiting longer for a "paying" replacement to arrive to take
the _public_ parking spot, unless I absolutely had to be somewhere immediately
I would queue up behind the leaving guy and block out the paying party and
wait them out just out of spite for the whole concept of this model.

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patio11
San Francisco: a city which is happily dysfunctional as long as everyone
enjoys the same level of dysfunction. Once you demonstrate that money can buy
the things that citizens of other towns get for free, San Francisco gets up in
arms about how money is ruining the great things SF has going for it.

~~~
EC1
On which planet is parking ever free?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Most neighborhoods; all shopping malls; your driveway; any gas station (for a
while).

Perhaps you meant 'business district parking'. I always felt it is a huge
mistake to have a 'cover charge' for shopping downtown. What is it supposed to
do? It certainly discourages customers.

~~~
loumf
A charge and limited time is meant to keep people who work there from parking
all day, so that there is more parking for customers.

In my town, the businesses ask for it for this reason.

------
ghshephard
The very first thing that I see arising from this is people who simply drive
around all day, acquiring parking spots, and reselling them. If you can find 3
parking spots an hour consistently, then that's the equivalent of $120K/year.

What's bad about that model, is the people looking for parking spaces are
likely to get _very_ aggressive about taking one that is opening up.

~~~
Finbarr
You could actually have multiple shitty cars that you park in prime spots and
get a consistent payout just by moving them all every day. Kind of like how
people rent out multiple apartments just to put them on airbnb

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WildUtah
This is only possible because SF street parking is wrongly priced. If parking
meters charged enough so that there were always at least one parking stall
available on the street within two blocks of everywhere in the city, you'd
never be able to charge for saving one.

The City actually installed the technology to set prices dynamically in a
network with predictive systems so that prices can rise to keep those free
spaces open.

But the city insists on charging so little at the meters that the very chance
to pay such a low rate is worth $20. Let's have market rate parking in The
City so drivers can always find a place to park. The money they pay for the
privilege could be used to make MUNI less awful.

~~~
muzz
Agreed. However, people don't seem to _want_ market-based pricing of parking.
The city actually recently turned off the meters on Sunday in part due to
public outcry, and now parking is once again hard to find on Sundays.

~~~
raldi
There was no outcry:

[http://sf.streetsblog.org/2014/03/20/contrary-to-ed-lee-
reco...](http://sf.streetsblog.org/2014/03/20/contrary-to-ed-lee-records-show-
no-popular-revolt-against-sunday-meters/)

~~~
muzz
The article points to 54 emails. SF is a city of almost 800,000

~~~
raldi
Right. That confirms my point.

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dmckeon
Considering that SF is piloting " _demand-responsive pricing_ "
[http://sfpark.org/how-it-works/pricing/](http://sfpark.org/how-it-
works/pricing/) this seems like a natural evolution. Alpha-test in Rome, beta
in SF, then try to expand to Boston & New York. :-)

~~~
softgrow
As Donald Shoup [http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/](http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/) keeps
reminding us, if there are no free spaces in a block, then the parking is
under-priced. The city needs to charge more, in that block, at that time, so
that spaces are made available and there is no need for cruising for parking.
It would be interesting to see whereabouts in SF the app is offering parks
for, probably not in the SFPark pilot areas.

Bottom line, it's a market problem but the market is dysfunctional. The app is
not disruptive, it's simply exploiting market failure.

------
Someone
I don't understand why this would separate the haves from the have nots.
Surely, a jobless person with a car can drive into town every morning at 7 AM
or so, park there, and wait for someone to pay $25 or more for 'their' spot.
If they want to take a chance (spot-hoarding counter-measures will only work
if they tie them to a license plate number, and if everyone buying a spot
checks that plate. I doubt people would do the latter, so the counter-
countermeasure would be to have multiple accounts)

In general, I think lesser paid people would be more willing to wait in their
cars for a few minutes to make a few dollars. So, I would expect money to flow
towards them.

Having said that I think this service is immoral, and should be forbidden.
What's next? Renting out seats in the subway? A picket line on he street where
you pay $1 for the right to pass? Paying someone a monthly fee for not seeing
your customers intimidated/beaten up?

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rodrodrod
This really feels like a "tragedy of the commons" scenario in the making. I'm
curious to see what the legal considerations for this type of service may be.

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sytelus
It's called providing liquidity for parking spots ;). But really, this is an
excellent idea. They can add another twist to it: Normally people know when
they would be leaving. So they can advertise spot and time. Other users can
then "book" the spot at the times being advertised.

If this becomes illegal then police can track down sellers using same app so
things are flaky at that point. However I would doubt if selling information
about available parking lots can be made illegal.

For those of you "troubled" by this, get this: Pretty much everything in life
with short in supply is essentially an auction. When you reserve dinner at
restaurant, they have adjusted their price such that their supply meets the
demand. In Essence they sold the spots to highest bidders. This is not limited
to private properties. When try to buy a house in the same area as great
public school, same thing happens - you get priced out of the area and the
goods goes to highest bidder.

~~~
dnr
Restaurants are a bad example. First, have you tried getting a seat at a
trendy restaurant on Friday night in SF? Second, most popular restaurants
deliberately charge less than an equilibrium price to avoid seeming unfair,
and to keep all the seats full. Similarly, popular bands sell concert tickets
for less than market rate to avoid seeming elitist, and also to make it more
likely to sell out a show, which is more fun for their fans and attracts more
attention for the band.

In short, not all business decisions are about extracting the most money
possible at the present time. There are often other longer-term
considerations.

~~~
raldi
Re: bands underpricing tickets, it just leads to Ticketmaster, StubHub, and
scalpers swooping in, correcting the pricing error, and pocketing the
difference.

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bruceb
Does this app specify the how long the space is? A person moving their SMART
car doesn't leave room for an SUV.

Another negative is this would encourage a few people who have their own
garage/private spot to now park on the street to make a few $ (even if it is
not economically worth their time people are not always rationale)

~~~
IvyMike
"I'm working from home tomorrow. Might as well make $20 sometime in the
morning."

~~~
bruceb
Would you take $16? ha.

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kubiiii
I thought of a similar but somewhat different system where cooperative users
of a paying system would point free parking spot when passing by or leaving
the spot. This would not ensure the spot to be free upon arrival of a user but
it would give an edge and prevent the hassle of dealing with someone who
(reasonably) wants the spot you supposedly paid for.

I thought of this while struggling to find a parking spot in Paris. Traffic
jams and parking spot searches are great moments to have ideas.

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zorpner
Moving to SF in June (for non-work-related reasons). I'm both fascinated and
repelled by the opportunities appearing in the cracks between the market and
public goods...

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kalleboo
The public transit system is broken, the taxi system is broken, the parking
system is broken. What's not broken in San Francisco public policy?

~~~
nodesocket
You obviously don't live in a metro city. Parking and driving in SF is an
absolute nightmare. However public transportation is probably the best besides
the east coast. Most people take Muni or the BART.

~~~
WildUtah
Compared to Europe or Asia or Latin America, SF public transit is a pathetic
disaster.

Just because transit is slightly better in SF than in Atlanta or Antarctica
doesn't make it other than broken.

Even third world cities the size of SF can build reasonable subway capacity
with a real city-wide network, busses than run regularly with short lead
times, affordable tickets without bizarre subsidies, BRT and some lines of
fast commuter rail.

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kingnight
What's a bigger incentive to leave a space than "I have things to do"?

Also, $20 is too little for people who don't have things to do.

~~~
crygin
$20 is probably more than enough to incentivize a market of people who will
occupy spots in order to resell them, though, if this takes off. I bet you
could do 10+ spots/hour driving around at the right day/time.

~~~
ghshephard
As one who has spent a considerable part of their life looking for parking
spots in San Francisco - it will be challenging during busy hours to find more
than 2-3 spots an hour. Which is the entire reason why this app is feasible -
many people don't want to spend 20-30 minutes looking for a parking spot.

~~~
jamesaguilar
This may be a stupid question, but why don't people drive in with a bike rack,
park in a non-busy section a mile or two from the busy section, then bike to
the busy section? It'd probably be faster, and healthier too.

~~~
reality_czech
Bikes get stolen quite a lot in SF, and the cops don't really make any effort
to find them again. Also, the bike lanes are mostly really taxi lanes.

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bmelton
Considering that it's not legal in San Francisco to store things that aren't
cars in your garage, I'd be surprised to find out if this didn't violate some
law or another.

I get that parking is bad there, whenever I'm silly enough to stay in the
city, I get to enjoy $40 a day in overnight parking fees, but while this
arguably obviates the pain in a way that probably wouldn't cause any pain,
there's almost certainly _some_ law that prohibits this, or something close
enough to this that it probably applies.

My real question is how you ensure that the person who bought the spot is the
one who paid for the spot. What is currently stopping people from just jumping
in open spots as they become available now?

~~~
michaelmior
The obvious way to solve this problem is to have the person entering the space
confirm that they found parking. Only then would the person leaving get paid.
This gives them incentive to hold the space for a few minutes while the person
who paid shows up.

~~~
justizin
disclaimer: not that i fucking condone this _at all_

in response to your musings, the person leaving is supposed to wait for the
person buying the spot. you can sort of say 'i am getting ready to leave', and
then you get a buzz when someone wants your spot and you kind of arrange
spending about 2-5min swapping out.

the idea is novel, but while i enjoy uber, i worry that things like uber and
this parking app that make it impossible to navigate street-level resources
without an active, connected smartphone become a sort of mandatory augmented
reality.

some balance will need to be struck, but i suppose it might be better than
circling a block ten or fifteen times to just pull off to the side [though
probably in the _Fucking_ bike lane] real quick and see if anyone around is
about to bail.

i dunno, i've always said anyone who drives regularly in sf is kind of.. eh..
yanno.

