SAN FRANCISCO | This city’s most popular neighborhoods are night owls, streets that come alive when the restaurants and pubs set the mood and light their candles. But try parking in these hot spots: no fun.
Now, in a move that some cities have tried and others are considering in these hard times, San Francisco’s transportation agency, anticipating a multimillion-dollar deficit, is proposing a plan it says will help ease parking messes. It wants to extend parking meter hours — up to midnight in the trendiest neighborhoods and on Sundays everywhere.
Those who already find it hard to park on the streets in the daytime are not happy.
“It’s putting the penalty on the people who can least afford it,” said Peter Govorchin, a music teacher for the San Francisco public schools who said he already averages $500 in parking tickets each year.
The move would raise more than $8 million a year, free up more parking spots and help business, says the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. But San Francisco is in for a battle royale if the outcry in other cities that have proposed or enacted meter changes are any indication.
Just across the Bay Bridge, the Oakland City Council is still smarting after it extended parking meters by two hours and increased rates and fines. That led to such a revolt — including recall petitions — that the new rules were rescinded last month, three months after they took effect.
Earlier this year, when Chicago, desperate for revenue, leased its parking meter system for 75 years to Morgan Stanley for $1.15 billion, parking meter hours were extended, rates were quadrupled, citation fees were hiked, and Mayor Richard M. Daley’s approval ratings fell to their worst level, 35 percent.
Parking meters have become such a political issue that in St. Petersburg, Fla., mayoral candidates have run on proposals to either eliminate all parking meters downtown or reduce meter enforcement hours.
In San Francisco, where the SFMTA unveiled a 37-page study on extending parking meters last month, the battle lines are being drawn.
On the nay side are small-business owners, residents who live in commercial areas, the antiwar group ANSWER (for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), the parking control officers union and Mayor Gavin Newsom.
On the aye side are environmental activists and members of the Board of Supervisors, as well as residents who argue that San Francisco can never have a first-class public transit system if it continues to raise fares and cut service while cars get a free pass, at least at night.
The mayor, who appoints the transit agency board that will decide on the proposal at an unspecified date, says the “timing” of the plan is wrong, given the economic crisis.
The Office of Small Business has been inundated with business owners worried about what the meters would do. “From our office’s perspective, businesses are teetering,” said its director, Regina Dick-Endrizzi. “Anything else affecting their ability to keep alive shouldn’t be done now.”
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