

San Francisco is getting a smarter parking meter system - abstractbill
http://sfpark.org/how-it-works/

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tptacek
Demand pricing. It's "frequently" going to cost less. Now. But since everyone
is going to get acclimated to variable pricing, you can bet that it's going to
cost _a whole lot more_ in the near future.

This is neither here nor there, since street parking in SF is probably much
too cheap now. But doublespeak is doublespeak.

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jrockway
Clearly the solution is to lease all the parking spaces to your friend's
company for 99 years, and let _them_ sort it out.

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tptacek
Hey, at least the meters take credit cards now, right?

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autarch
I don't understand how this variable pricing thing is going to work. Will
raising the price _really_ make people give up looking for parking and go
home?

It seems to me that once you've gotten in your car and driven to your
destination, you're pretty much committed to parking there. How high do the
prices need to be in order to keep you from parking at that point?

And how many pieces will the meter be smashed into as a result of the rage
that these prices induce?

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houseabsolute
I imagine they'll put a ceiling on the price, but no floor. But if not, at the
margin people will choose other means to travel at busy parking times because
they know -- at least after the first trip -- that they will be charged
$50/hour on the fourth of July. Also, people may choose to leave the city more
quickly if the parking price is high. If demand for parking remains
consistently high, this may also make it more feasible to build larger parking
structures or improve the ones that already exist. Also, the higher prevailing
prices for streetside parking may bring other players into the game (like
hotels or office buildings) that had before not seen the economic advantage to
opening their parking to non-tenants.

It's not as though people only become economic participants in the parking
market when they arrive; they make the choice to participate when they choose
to leave the house and when they choose to stay in the city for four hours
rather than two.

Regarding the smashed meter problem, it should be a simple matter to add
cameras to the devices.

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coopr
The ceiling, in this case, is $6/hour. The floor is $.25 per hour. Yep, in
some areas at some times of day, parking that was formerly expensive (but
lightly used) could become free.

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hristov
And of course the new smart system will enable parking enforcers to give you a
ticket more quickly and efficiently as they will certainly have devices in
their cars that indicate immediately when any meter in the neighborhood
expires while a car is still parked there. I suspect this is the major
motivation.

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philwelch
You make a _lot_ more money off parking tickets than you make off of parking
meters.

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ryanwaggoner
Source?

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philwelch
San Francisco parking fine revenue is on the order of $100 million, annually:
[http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-08-01/bay-
area/17122003_1_me...](http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-08-01/bay-
area/17122003_1_meter-violations-higher-fines-parking-operations)

Parking meter revenue for _three_ years doesn't match that:
[http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-01-25/bay-
area/17226881_1_me...](http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-01-25/bay-
area/17226881_1_meter-revenue-parking-meters-collection-rates)

True, not all tickets are written for meters, but it's clearly in the city's
revenue-earning interest to make it more difficult to legally park and write
more tickets. And since a parking meter earns $55-65 with a ticket but only
$2-3.50 for an hour of legitimate parking, an entire day or two of legitimate
meter use earns the city exactly as much money as a single meter violation.
Some municipalities--Seattle, as I recall--expressly prohibit paying a parking
meter that isn't yours; the only reasonable rationale for this is to increase
ticketing rates.

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tumult
Mash live parking data against Google Maps? _Yes please._ I willingly hand
over whatever increase in parking rates you want.

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aren
There's more that's not being mentioned, and understandably so. San Francisco
will reap huge rewards in parking ticket revenue. SFpark is so smart that it
knows when a space is occupied and the meter has expired. Parking Enforcement
officers don't have to drive/walk around looking for violations -- their
handhelds will pinpoint them! Don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to
seeing SFpark in action. I think it brings more good than harm.

I'm also in the parking (ticket) business, but on the other side of the coin:
<http://parkzing.com>

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MartinCron
Maybe I am alone in this line of thinking, but shouldn't people who are
illegally parked get tickets? Ticketing illegal parking is a good thing. It's
not in any way liberty-infringing or anything.

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sh1mmer
I know some folks at City gov, I would _love_ to city a public API for this.
So I'm about to stick my oar in. I'll let you know how it goes.

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dmd
Meanwhile, here in Philadelphia, we recently upgraded from quarter-feeding
meters to smartcard meters. Unfortunately, the smartcards spontaneously lose
their value with worrying frequency, so everyone just uses quarters anyway.

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tlrobinson
Supposedly there's going to be mobile phone apps that show you exactly where
the nearest parking spaces are. That will be amazing.

Of course this system also allows them to ticket expired meters _much_ more
efficiently.

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lakeeffect
These new systems suck because there is never free time left on a spot when
you find one. They automatically reset when the last car pulls away,
increasing overall parking costs for consumers.

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coopr
Sorry, in this case you are mistaken - the sensors in San Francisco will not
be used for meter-zeroing. In fact, they can't be used for meter-zeroing -
while they are fairly accurate, they are not accurate enough for this feature.
Imagine if the meter was zeroed before you'd actually left!

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hugh3
I can't decide what I think of this. In general I almost never park in a
metered space because I grew up thinking parking should be free and I'm quite
happy to walk an extra fifteen minutes in order to avoid reaching into my
pocket. This is why I rarely go into San Francisco except at night and on
Sundays.

On second thoughts, they're probably going to use this as an excuse to extend
metered hours to nights and Sundays, aren't they?

Car-unfriendliness is probably the worst thing about San Francisco. If it had
a good public transport system it might be tolerable, but it doesn't.

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gcampbell
"Parking should be free" is an interesting discussion point. Leaving out the
issue of promoting turnover, it seems reasonable to me that a municipality
should be able to charge rent for storage of private property (i.e. my car) on
public property (i.e. the street).

On the other hand, I also grew up in an area with ample free parking, so I
certainly understand the visceral annoyance. To me, the convenience of being
able to pay with credit/debit cards (rather than having to hunt the seat
cushions for loose change) might go a long way toward mitigating that effect,
though.

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mikeyur
Does San Francisco not have pay by phone parking meters?

We've had them in Vancouver for awhile now, and it's so handy (after you setup
an account the first time). They text you 10 minutes before your meter expires
and you can just call and add extra minutes if you're going to be longer than
expected.

<http://vancouver.ca/engsvcs/parking/paybyphone.htm>

~~~
philwelch
Parking tickets are far more lucrative than parking meters--it's actually
against the interests of meter enforcement to do this.

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inferno0069
This is big news for holders of disabled placards.

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hugh3
Why is that? Are they still going to be able to get free parking? Can they
currently get free parking?

~~~
inferno0069
Sorry for not making it clear whether I even meant good or bad news. Under CA
law they get free parking at meters as well as in (most) restricted-time
zones. It seems like that would continue here, and now the city has the goal
of upping the rates to always keep spaces open on every block.

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jrockway
How exactly are the benefits going to cascade to pedestrians and cyclists?

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noisebleed
Part of the hope is that it will reduce overall car traffic by shortening the
amount of time people are just driving in circles (distractedly) looking for
parking. Apparently this makes up a surprisingly big percentage of the time
spent in cars in SF.

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awongh
I can't wait to see the live data feed that comes out of this.

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invisible
This should have included *by late 2012.

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dnsworks
I worked out a system two years ago for doing something like this, but with
the idea of networking all of the commercial parking lots in San Francisco
together, and creating algorithms & equipment to allow for either
instantaneous variable-rate pricing, or to suggest parking "deals" for lot
managers to announce in order to try and keep their lots full.

In the end, I realized that this was price-fixing and that I would probably be
sued for it. The government, however, is allowed to do things to the citizen
that the citizen may not do.

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scrod
The demand-responsive pricing aspect is the most interesting:

>"SFpark will charge the lowest possible hourly rate to achieve the right
level of availability in both garages and at metered spaces. This project is
not about raising parking revenue; it’s about making parking easier to find.
SFpark is designed so each block and each garage maintains have about, an
average, 20% availability."

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dnsworks
This from the municipality that had to put a network engineer in prison in
order to get access to their DWDM equipment? Then again, parking is like a
$125m per year profit center for San Francisco, so they're more likely to get
parking collections right than, well, anything else.

