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San Francisco 'Market Rate' Parking Experiment Underway

By Eric Lipman

Via a post on the Land Use Prof Blog, I discovered that San Francisco (funded by your federal tax dollars) has, over the past couple of weeks, begun toying with a system of variable rate, electronically monitored parking meters, the stated goal of which is "collecting and distributing real-time information about where parking is available so drivers can quickly find open spaces," and instituting "demand-responsive pricing." The program, called SFPark, sounds interesting, and I have no doubt that a gaggle of urban planning consultants and, well, land use professors (sorry Prof. Emerson) will be making PowerPoint slides and writing law review articles about it, respectively, for years to come. I could try to succinctly describe all the elements of the system for you, but wouldn't you rather watch an adorable animated video? I thought so: Early criticism of the program: spots could, theoretically, cost up to $18 per hour and information about availability will be distributed by text message and mobile device applications, implicating safety concerns, though SFPark makes clear that you should scope out your intended destination "before you leave home." Any SF readers have feedback on this experiment?

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on August 10, 2010 (boomark / email).