Sunday metering begins in SF but few notice

01.07.13 - 4:55 pm | Steven T. Jones |

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Yesterday, after years of heated conflicts over the issue, San Francisco officially began charging motorists to use metered parking spaces between noon and 6pm on Sundays – and nobody seemed to notice.

For the first few weeks, parking control officers with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency are going to be issuing warnings rather than expensive parking tickets. But as Streetsblog SF reported today, even that didn't seem to be happen. Its street survey in the Haight and Mission districts found that most parkers didn't pay, and they received no warnings that they were supposed to.

SFMTA spokespersons that didn't respond to Streetsblog inquiries also haven't responded to questions from the Guardian about what happened and how many warnings were issued (UPDATED BELOW).

Sunday metering is intended to create more parking turnover in busy commercial corridors and bolster the SFMTA's budget, capturing more money for Muni. But for now, it seems that everyone involved is still trying to shake off their holiday hangovers and get up to speed.

UPDATE 5:45: SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose just returned our call to say parking control officers were indeed busy issuing warnings yesterday. "We issued about 4,000 warnings yesterday. That's part of getting the word out," he said. As far as Streetsblog's observations, he said it could have been a fluke of timing or the fact that meters don't indicate when someone pre-pays or pays by cell phone. "In the Haight, specifically, we issued about 600 warnings, and about 1,000 in the Mission," he said. In addition to the direct warnings, the SFMTA has been publicizing the Sunday metering on billboards and Muni posters, through merchant groups, in the media, and on the meters themselves.

Enforcement with actual tickets begins on Jan. 27.

Comments

It would be churlish and vindictive to enforce this with any

seriousness given the widespread unpopularity and spitefulness of the measure. The cops don't appear to be motivated to enforce it and moreover most of them do not work on Sundays so enforcement can only be cursory at best.

Expect to see a lot more meters jammed with superglue and bent coins.

Posted by Guest on Jan. 07, 2013 @ 5:08 pm

Spiteful to pay for what you

Spiteful to pay for what you use? Get a life.

Posted by Guest on Jan. 08, 2013 @ 5:53 pm

Why don't we start charging entrance for Dolores Park then?

You should pay for what you use.

Posted by Lucretia Snapples on Jan. 08, 2013 @ 5:56 pm

We're headed towards 24-hour a day parking enforcement

Which will be just wonderful for San Francisco nightlife. The little joy of not paying on Sunday or finding a free spot overnight will be yanked from our arms - with people like Steven cheering it on.

Posted by Lucretia Snapples on Jan. 07, 2013 @ 5:41 pm

Yeah, the war on cars continues it's merry way and will no doubt

prove to be just as successful as the war on drugs.

Posted by Guest on Jan. 07, 2013 @ 7:01 pm

Chicago sold its parking division to an investment bank

Which then jacked up rates and fines and imposed 24-hour a day pay parking. The people's response? They started cutting down the meters.

It's hilarious how Steven keeps peddling MUNI's line that this is done to "turnover" parking more quickly on Sundays. This was done to bring in more revenue to MUNI and its millionaire boss - Ed Reisken. Period.

Posted by Lucretia Snapples on Jan. 07, 2013 @ 7:41 pm

I noticed!

The MTA is using San Franciscans as an ATM.

Posted by Greg on Jan. 07, 2013 @ 10:22 pm

Meters

Sunday meters are BS. So are meters after 6pm. Another example of how SF has declared war on people who want to or need to use cars.

Posted by Richmondman on Jan. 08, 2013 @ 9:57 am

If the supposed reason for

If the supposed reason for Sunday meters is to free up parking, then they could charge 25 cents an hour and accomplish that goal. Sunday parking meters are just revenue generation for the most mis-managed agency in the City.

Posted by The Commish on Jan. 08, 2013 @ 10:23 am

The MTA makes up

The MTA makes up justifications for their policies on the fly and then switches polarities when that last justification is proven to be a falsehood.

The only constant is that they want more money for the Muni, but there are no guarantees that they will not simply replace unconstrained resources that had gone to the Muni with the new parking revenues leaving Muni funding flat.

It is not like the MTA has never done this before.

The take on this was relatively minimal, on less than a handful of millions of dollars while the political costs have yet to be realized.

MTA policy needs to focus on making the Muni run reliably and quickly first as an effective and viable alternative to driving and then to discourage driving via raising the costs of car ownership.

As it stands, the MTA is picking fights that bring in minimal amounts of resources yet adds disgruntled drivers to the MTA alienated constituency pile already high with Muni riders.

This political posture indicates that the MTA has no desire to actually provide transit service, rather is following Mayoral orders to produce more cash to be diverted outside the agency towards politically favored destinations.

Viewed as an ongoing extraction operation, corrupt government makes perfect sense. The corrupt nature of the extraction operation can be determined by who is paying and who is getting paid.

Posted by marcos on Jan. 08, 2013 @ 11:24 am

Free Muni

Don't forget that the MTA has diverted millions of dollars from maintenance to fund free Muni for kids that already benefitted from a significant discount. Thanks, David Campos - is that what we got for the bucks Rose Pak put in your pockets?

Posted by Richmondman on Jan. 08, 2013 @ 2:32 pm

it's great we've finally

it's great we've finally gotten rid of the bizarre anachronism of free Sunday parking. Didn't make any sense. In six months no one will remember.

Posted by Guest on Jan. 08, 2013 @ 5:52 pm

Everyone in San Francisco

Everyone in San Francisco should sign the petition put forth by sfenuf.org.

The way this new measure was passed is not acceptable.

Instead of a real vote by the board of supervisors the mayor simply added the measure to the 2012-13 budget and in order to reject the measure the Board of supervisors would have had to reject the 2012-13 budget. Thanks.

Posted by jccourt on Jan. 09, 2013 @ 5:04 pm

jccourt, WTF does this have to do with anything?

Talk in riddles?

Posted by Guest on Jan. 09, 2013 @ 5:06 pm