New San Francisco parking policies

I was just listening to NPR in the car and heard them talking about San Francisco following in the footsteps of Washington DC to implement these new hard core parking meters. All the spots have sensors to tell when they are occupied/not and the meters themselves can be remotely controlled to change prices for different reasons.

For example, when it's really busy, they jack up the rates of the meters to dissuade people from parking and when traffic is light, they drop prices way down. In DC parking at the meters can get as high as $18/hour!! The analyst on the radio called it the "Goldilocks" theory of parking...they want to control the pricing until the congestion is "just right."

DC claims to have seen an uptake in people using public transit as a result...could be interesting. Seems more like a clever way to generate WAY more money for the city...

Interesting idea.  I like it.

 Well, congestion pricing has been shown to work in a lot of cases.

Look at London, for example. They introduced a £8 charge for driving in the center of the city a few years ago, and have seen a marked drop in vehicle traffic. Its not parking, but the principle is the same.

I think the SF plan is a good idea.

D