Streetsblog New York City

It’s too soon in the development of SFPark to draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of demand-responsive pricing on parking habits, says the SFMTA’s Jay Primus, who manages the SFPark program.

Primus got in touch yesterday when the Streetsblog Network highlighted a blog post from Michael Perkins at Greater Greater Washington which claimed that the results of the experiment, which began in April, are showing that “prices affect parking less than San Francisco expected.”

“To date,” wrote Perkins, “the most crowded blocks have typically continued to be crowded even after adjusting the prices upward, while under-occupied blocks have not filled up even after dropping the price.”

Primus responded in the comments and spoke with Streetsblog to address points raised by Perkins and other readers. “The ‘expectations’ that Michael wrote of are simply and nothing more than his own expectations,” Primus said. It’s also worth pointing out that Perkins’ post didn’t include any specific data or sources that support his assertion.

“SFMTA has taken a very empirical approach with SFPark,” said Primus, “and this is a demonstration project that is just getting started, so it’s a little early for anyone to say how well it’s working, especially without proper analysis and evaluation.”

See the full statement from Primus after the break:

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New York City is moving forward with plans to use sensors to improve parking management, along the lines of San Francisco’s pioneering SFPark system. The program will be unveiled next year, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced at a conference on transportation and technology held last Friday at Columbia University.

For now, DOT is only dropping tantalizing hints about the program. During her presentation Sadik-Khan showed an illustration of parking sensors and an SFPark smartphone app guiding drivers to open parking spaces. When asked by an audience member whether the new system would only be used to alert motorists to parking opportunities or to manage the pricing of on-street spaces as well, Sadik-Khan replied, “both.”

Using sensors to manage the price of parking could be transformative. SFPark covers eight San Francisco neighborhoods and roughly one-quarter of the city’s metered spaces. Data gathered from sensors embedded in the road, enables the city to adjust meter prices with the goal of ensuring that there is always one parking space available on each block, reducing the traffic caused by cruising.

Last year, DOT put out a request for expressions of interest in a program that could be even more far-reaching. At the time, the agency expressed interest in a system that could not only enable dynamic pricing of parking, but also automatically alert the NYPD to parking meter violations, crack down on parking placard abuse and synchronize with pay-by-phone technology.

DOT did not respond to Streetsblog inquiries seeking more information about Sadik-Khan’s announcement, so it is not yet clear how robust a program will be rolled out next year. The possibilities, though, are substantial.

San Francisco launched the world’s most ambitious and innovative parking project yesterday, a federally-funded trial that could revolutionize the way cities manage the public supply of parking. SFPark promises to make it easier for motorists to find spaces in busy commercial districts, while reducing congestion, speeding transit, increasing safety for pedestrians and bicyclists, and improving air quality.

The milestone for SFPark was celebrated at a packed press conference in the North Light Court at City Hall yesterday morning. SFMTA Chief Nat Ford was joined by Mayor Ed Lee, parking guru and UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, and other dignitaries to announce the SFPark iPhone application and real-time parking availability data.

The demand-based parking pilot is being implemented over the coming months, covering 7,000 of the city’s 28,800 metered spaces and 12,250 garage spaces. Drivers, thanks to street sensors, or magnetometers, will be able to check their iPhone application (an app will be available for Android in the coming weeks), or computer, to get real-time data on the availability and cost of parking spaces in 15 commercial districts.

“How many of you have been dumb in your past? How many of you have acted dumb? I know I have,” said Mayor Lee. “You know, when you’re driving around looking for a parking space and you’re double parking and you’re running around trying to see whether something will open, you’re dumb.”

“We want to be less dumb about this, and that’s why I’m so happy to launch today’s pilot program, SFPark,” Lee said. “That’s going to be our San Francisco version of congestion pricing.”

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You might be shocked at how much traffic consists of drivers who have already arrived at their destination but find themselves cruising the streets, searching for an open parking spot. In some city neighborhoods, cruising makes up as much as 40 percent of all traffic. All this unnecessary traffic slows down buses, endangers cyclists and pedestrians, delays other motorists, and produces harmful emissions. The key to eliminating it is to get the price of parking right.

So what’s the right price for curbside parking? According to UCLA professor Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, “the right price is the lowest price you can charge and still have one or two spaces available on each block.” Depending on the demand for parking at a given location, the right price could be higher or lower than the static prices you see at traditional meters. You need a dynamic system that adjusts the price based on demand.

The city of San Francisco has been putting Shoup’s ideas into practice on an unprecedented scale with its SFpark program, which will fully launch later this week. In addition to strategically adjusting curbside meter rates, SFpark sets prices in city garages to make them an attractive alternative to on-street spots, and distributes real-time information about parking availability to help drivers find open spaces. It is the most ambitious project in the United States to cut traffic and improve quality of life by getting the price of parking right.

Hundreds of cyclists and pedestrians — and more than a few elected officials — turned out on Friday afternoon last week to cut the ribbon on an impressive piece of infrastructure for human-powered travel — the long-awaited Cal Park Tunnel in Marin County, California.

The project has been talked about since the late 1970s and in active development for the last 12 years. For Marin cyclists, the 1.2 mile path/tunnel combo adds a critical, safe link to the north-south bikeway that will eventually run from the Golden Gate Bridge to Cloverdale in Sonoma County.  It is expected to shave nearly 15 minutes off of trips and serve up to 800,000 riders a year. And just as important: The rail right-of-way has been maintained so that in the future, SMART light rail vehicles can use the tunnel too.

The Cal Park Tunnel has some top-notch features: ample lighting, cell phone reception, emergency phone call boxes, a ventilation system and smooth pavement.  To read up on loads more history of the tunnel and information, check out Streetsblog SF’s great recap from last week.

In a refreshing turn, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs Muni and manages the streets of San Francisco, has produced an informative and whimsical animated short explaining how their dynamic parking management pilot, SFPark, will work.

The video (and pretty much everything else about the SFPark.org website) uses a cute Sim-City aesthetic to explain an otherwise wonky parking policy. It's an interesting approach to take with complicated material, but I think the video does a great job of demonstrating how the system should work, and it does so in just under three minutes.

After covering this beat for over a year and a half, I also learned a few things. For instance, most people don't realize the cost of parking could come down if demand is anemic in a particular area, but I didn't realize the price could theoretically go as low as $.25/hour if the demand requires it. If the good parking managers at the SFMTA are looking to blunt possible public criticism, I think they will do well to highlight the fact that rates can decline.

Parking guru Donald Shoup already picked up on the sim and tweeted it to his followers, calling it a "great new video."

Will something as cute as this do anything to ameliorate the visceral rage parking meters inspire in many drivers? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

Starting June 27, 570 bus stops across New York City could disappear. Unless Congress delivers an 11th hour reprieve -- still a distinct possibility -- service cuts will axe or reroute dozens of bus lines, raising the question of what to do with all the curbside real estate at these potentially defunct stops.

Any plan to re-purpose bus stops will be provisional, since the cuts might be averted or service could be restored at a later date. But at least one other city forced to cope with bus cuts has used its defunct stops to promote sustainable transportation and improve the quality of public space.

In San Francisco's Mission District, five bus stops were converted to bike corrals, each of which has parking for between six and twelve bikes. In another location, the city made room for a "parklet," a temporary public plaza, by shifting two parking spaces from down the street into the freed-up bus stop space.

Here in New York City, it looks like DOT's contingency plan does not include re-purposing street space for pedestrian or bike improvements.

At most closed-down bus stops, said an agency spokesperson, the curbside area will simply take on the regulations of the adjoining area. If the street has parking along the curb, for example, the bus stop will become parking. In a few cases, the bus stop might be used for something like a truck loading zone instead.

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In San Francisco, the Pavement to Parks program has launched an initiative that may someday alter the way U.S. cities treat their commercial strips.

Taking the PARK(ing) Day concept a step further, the Parklets Program is experimenting with allowing businesses to convert parking spaces into public spaces and cafes. The first was installed in March outside the Mojo Bicycle Cafe on Divisadero Street, where two parking spaces were reallocated. Now cafe tables and chairs, benches, bike parking, and plants sit on a raised platform over the asphalt. If all goes well through the evaluation period, the idea is to eventually implement a regular permitting process that business groups and communities can apply for. It looks good: Owners of Mojo say business is up 30 percent and they have had to hire more staff.

The Pavement to Parks program has already transformed a number of community spaces in the Castro, Showplace Triangle and Guerrero Park.

"The Wiggle" is one of San Francisco's most beloved bike routes, guiding riders between two nasty hills. It even has its own Wikipedia entry.

It's so popular, it's hard to stand there at any time of day and not see packs of cyclists passing through! (Note: This is a camera person's dream.) Recently, after a judge partially lifted the legal injunction on new bike amenities in the city, San Francisco striped a unique combo to help cyclists safely navigate one of the Wiggle's twists. A green bike box on Scott Street -- believed to be California's first -- allows riders to safely wait and queue up for a dedicated left turn lane which runs the length of the entire next block.

Andy Thornley from the San Francisco Bike Coalition showed us around to see how it works -- and we heard from riders who voiced their appreciation.

Editor's note: We linked to this story out of San Francisco in the headline stack this morning, and it's worth a very close look. Experts counsel that the first step in reforming parking policies that promote driving is to measure the parking supply. The number one recommendation in "Suburbanizing the City" [PDF], the 2008 report on New York City's traffic-inducing parking policies, is to "create a complete, public inventory of existing, permitted and planned off-street parking." In San Francisco, they're methodically assessing the parking supply so that planners can make more informed decisions. In New York, the Department of City Planning is still groping around in the dark.

No sizable city in the country, or likely the world, has been able to say with any certainty how many parking spaces it has, public or private, until now. Over the last 18 months, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) has tallied every publicly accessible parking space within city limits, including free and metered spaces on-street and every publicly accessible garage [PDF map].

The total number of spaces, as Mayor Gavin Newsom recently announced on his Youtube site, is 441,541. Of the total, over 280,000 are on-street spaces, 25,000 of which are metered. For just the on-street spaces, that is roughly the equivalent area of Golden Gate Park.

"Most cities have very little knowledge of their parking inventory," said Rachel Weinberger, a planning professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former transportation policy adviser to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Weinberger called the parking census a "tremendous effort."

"Without the basic knowledge [city planners] have no basis on which to make decisions about future supply policy, about current management policy or even about how their transportation systems are working."

Don Shoup, planning professor at UCLA and author of the definitive book on the history of parking, The High Cost of Free Parking, was excited to hear the news. "San Francisco’s census of parking spaces is a great achievement, and the first of its kind anywhere," he said.

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