Very much, yes.

Mark, I actually wonder about this. Like you, I have hardly ever had any trouble finding parking. When I owned a car, I never parked more than 2 blocks from home. I've probably circled the block a few times in certain neighborhoods but there are a lot of public parking garages scattered around town and they are not usually, in my experience, full.

So here's my theory: some merchant has a crappy business. Let's say the merchant's name is Havid Deller, and he has a crappy beauty supply company on Geary. Business is in the shitter and has been that way for years. The merchant, who has a pretty high opinion of himself (after all, he's a self-made man), starts to formulate fantasies about why the business is failing. Eventually he hits on the obvious: not enough parking! If only people could park right in front of his business, they'd buy hair gel by the cubic meter. Clearly those filthy socialists on the bus aren't his customers. They hardly even shower!

So then the merchant, instead of tending to his business, starts a one-man crusade in order to perpetuate his fantasy that the city is stabbing him in the back by taking away his parking. There's no need to produce any evidence in support of this position, as it's plain to everybody. The city is out to kill off small businesses by taking away their parking! Death to the communists!

The sign-in is supposed to be on every page, down at the bottom where the comments are.

Join SPUR - it is a great organization for San Franciscans to support if you love the City and care for its future.

Bravo, jwb.

I'm holding the proposed ordinance in my hand and can't see any of the doomsday things mentioned in the lead-in piece. Can someone quote me some section numbers?

I also can't open the SPUR document, either from the link or from SPUR's site.

No one has yet mentioned that the ordinance encourages car sharing and that it mandates car-share dedicated parking spaces. see section 166.a and c

The disaster is on page 21. Where downtown currently has a maximum parking allocation of 7% of gross floor space, the new measure allows at least one per 2000 square feet and sets no limit on the amount that could be approved. The measure also introduces a twisted "right" to a parking space which goes against this city's long-standing policies and goals.

"Encouraging" car-sharing is one of those meaningless throw-aways that is an attempt to make an unreasonable proposition appear more reasonable without actually being so.

Fact is, there is no such thing as a free lunch, or parking. Establishing parking minimums like this just shifts costs around - it doesn't make them go away. Economics is economics - you cannot escape it.

Anytime you mandate requiring MORE parking in a development, several things happen. First, you create an abundance of parking which lowers its price in the marketplace, either as free parking or low cost parking. This causes more people to drive into the city because anytime you create an abundance of something and depress its price, people will use more of that good or service. The result is MORE congestion on the roads and MORE pollution in the air we breathe. The result is also a misallocation of economic resources as consumers consume more of a good than they otherwise would in a market absent the government intervention requiring the more parking spaces. Anytime you underprice a good it WILL be overused.

Second, it wastes valuable land on dead, nonproductive use - i.e. storing cars. There is less land to build housing, schools, community centers, child care, etc. because more land is taken up for parking.

Third, it drives UP the cost of development. Parking spaces do not generate revenue per square foot at the same rates as leasable or saleable office/retail/residential. There is a reason why many parking garages are owned by municipalities - parking garages often need to be subsidized. Thus, the costs to have space dedicated to store cars gets shifted onto the price of these other uses, making housing more expensive, office space more expensive, etc.

Fourth, it stifles redevelopment. As increased parking requirements drive UP the cost of development, it drives DOWN investment in real estate in less desireable locations - those locations most needing private capital investment.

Fifth, it reduces transit use. As the price of parking goes down, some transit users (those who are not transit captive) will switch to driving instead. As ridership goes down, it becomes MORE costly to society as a whole to operate public transit. Bus lines get eliminated, bus service frequency gets reduced, etc. in order to shore up the system - negatively affecting those least able to bear it - poor working households who are transit-captive.

This is a basically a bullshit proposition that anyone with half a brain can see is complete disaster. I'd recommend Prof. Donald Shoup's (UCLA) excellent book The High Cost of Free Parking for anyone interested in the issue.

I just want to see as much effort put into freeing up some rent-controlled apartments in the City by making everybody submit their tax returns to make sure millionaires aren't eating up valuable rent-controlled apartment space at $250 or so per month while making $100k+ per year and having a home in Marin for weekends.

You want to have local government bureaucrats in possession of our income data, disclosable upon demand to any member of the public under sunshine?

-marc

Just those of "us" who are taking advantage of a public benefit, Marc.

Yuppies? How atavistically 80s!

The big ole solution to that is to quit basing the City's future on luxury condo dwellers and only entitle housing we need for people who already live here and are couch surfing, raising families in SRO rooms or otherwise housing stressed, folks who will take transit because they do take transit.

The amount of productivity that the NYC subway provides for Manhattan is enormous.

On the matter of means testing for rent control, if means testing were implemented, then we'd see nothing but redlining in the letting of apartments. High wage earners and the wealthy would be the only ones who need apply. Means testing, unless made double blind, is a non-starter. How much would it cost for the City to provide double blind means testing?

Of course, the more luxury condos that are entitled, the more likely those who can service $900,000 notes @ 6% ($5,395.95 a month) would be to vote against rent control.

Yet another reason to stop the march of the luxury high rise condos!

-marc

Actually encouraging car sharing seems to be cleary working as we have 3 thriving car share companies in SF. These car shares are dependent on the number of convenient parking lot locations throughout the city.

"Anytime you underprice a good it WILL be overused." True, but this may only be a short term event. Eventually, a supply & demand equilibrium will be reached with prices rising if parking is underpriced.

Does additional parking have costs? Sure, to a certain degree, but I think it is misguided to blame parking as a significant contributing cost factor to expensive housing/office space in SF. I think our current planning department & board of supervisors is the bottleneck stifling development or redevelopment, directly driving up housing costs. We have developers sitting on land for years waiting for clearance to build. The process is expensive, onerous, and full of risk (i.e., hey your land parcel has just been rezoned!). We also have property owners sitting with empty apartments/buildings because of rent control regulations, thus driving up costs. While I may not agree with the proposal, I don't buy the argument that mandating parking is the culprit for the high cost of housing.

Also, don't forget those individuals buying the $1mm condos pay hefty property taxes. Cut out those folks, you cut off a huge income stream to the city and you'll see more budget cuts, and more social programs cut for all those SRO tenants and other lower income groups. Don't bite the hand that feeds the mouth.

I think you made my point ... the population counted as City residents decreased, the supply of housing increased, and yet the prices for housing went up quite bit more than what is expected from inflation.

Just like the Muni coin tokens were bought and horded when everyone learned that fares were going up from $1.25 to $1.50.

If you move to the City in your 20s, making $45k a year or whatever, and you get into a rent-controlled apartment .... fast forward 10 years, and you're making $100k a year or whatever, saved up enough to buy a nice home in Marin or maybe in the South Peninsula, and maybe you even work in Mountain View or somewhere down that way ... Perhaps you decide to hold on to that rent-controlled apartment as your "second, City home" ... so now your rent-controlled apartment at a much, much lower than market rate is empty most weeks and meanwhile rents/housing prices go up for the rest of us.

It'd be nice if folks would get as passionate about upper-income folks getting subsidized/reduced/welfare housing rates because programs do not verify folks really NEED the assistance to maintain a primary residence in the City ... I would guess there are a lot of folks these days who actually live elsewhere full-time and hold on to their "affordable housing" in the City as a second, weekender home.

But since this passionate thread is more about parking, the answer is no, we don't need any more parking in downtown San Francisco.

On the bright side, I noticed FlexCar just doubled the number of cars (from 3 to 6) at the Howard and Main Street surface parking lot ... of course, that lot will become the temporary Transbay Transit Center bus depot soon.

I forgot to add two things. One, higher price condos do result in more property tax revenue. However, you need to figure of the total cost resulting from this whole scenario. First, what is increase in public services - street cleaning, police, fire, parks & rec, etc. from the added load of these condos. At this point, you are probably at a net gain. However, there are the cost externalities I noted in the form of longer commutes, more congestion, more cars on the road, and more air pollution - costs which are externalized onto all the rest of us even though most of us are not getting any benefit from the off-street parking.

Second, lots of downtown off-street parking is bad for street-level retail. Its great for shopping malls like the Westfield, since the bulk of their customers come by car, often from out of the City. However, its bad for street retail as convenient access to a parking space results in shoppers who don't window shop. They get out of their car right at their destination, buy their stuff and leave. Limited parking with good public transit is far better to the average street retail merchant as it gets people having to walk down the street, which results in more window shopping and more shopping period.

Do you need some parking? Yes. Do you need tons of it. Absolutely not. San Francisco has one of the most (if not most) vibrant downtown commercial district on the entire West Coast. It is amazing what has been achieved hear in the state that invented car culture. It is striking the difference between the commercial areas in SF and the commercial areas in LA. (If it weren't for LA's immigrant communities, the retail districts in LA would be even worse)

It'd be nice if folks would get as passionate about upper-income folks getting subsidized/reduced/welfare housing rates because programs do not verify folks really NEED the assistance to maintain a primary residence in the City ... I would guess there are a lot of folks these days who actually live elsewhere full-time and hold on to their "affordable housing" in the City as a second, weekender home.

Show me how you can do means testing for rent control without redlining, having landlords cherry pick based on perceived markers of evading rent control such as: education, income level, ethnicity and such, and we'll talk.

More off-street parking minimums = higher development costs = higher prices. Period.

This is true in most places but not here.

Say it costs $400,000 to construct a unit. Say it costs $75,000 to construct a parking space for that unit.

If that unit goes for market rate, say, $800,000, how can you say that the price of the parking space drove up price?

Would you say that the price of the unit would be $725,000 if parking were not required?

Demand for parking drives up price where the costs of constructing parking do not.

The distinction is subtle but not academic.

I forgot to add two things. One, higher price condos do result in more property tax revenue. However, you need to figure of the total cost resulting from this whole scenario. First, what is increase in public services - street cleaning, police, fire, parks & rec, etc. from the added load of these condos. At this point, you are probably at a net gain. However, there are the cost externalities I noted in the form of longer commutes, more congestion, more cars on the road, and more air pollution - costs which are externalized onto all the rest of us even though most of us are not getting any benefit from the off-street parking.

We need a lifecycle economic analysis of this before we go off entitling a zillion high rise luxury condos, lest we entitle housing that will cost more than it benefits in the "out years," sucking services from established neighborhoods.

That's one of the problems with fixed assets like roads and off street parking spaces - once built, its a bitch to unbuild.

Especially high rises that are built to deform safely but end up uninhabitable. Twisted wreckage might characterize the SF skyline post big quake like a mid rise building in Lubbock that was twisted by a tornado into uninhabitability decades ago.

-marc

Marc -

I think you are trying to create a zero-sum dichotomy where one does not exist. Yes - the price of housing in SF is indeed partly a function of demand driven by the higher incomes in the Bay Area.

However, there is also a supply side to the price equation - there always is. If the costs of production go up, then suppliers will attempt to maintain profit margins by increasing price. Of course, absolute inelasticity of demand, less of the product will be demanded by the consumer. The other choice is to maintain price (or raise it partially and absorb some of the increased costs) and accept lower profit margins.

And yes, I am saying that without parking, the price of the unit would very likely be lower. If I can make the same return on investment in each scenario ($800,000 price less $75,000 cost for parking = $725,000 price less no parking), I will charge the lower price in order to capture higher demand. If I can move my product off the shelf faster (due to higher demand), I am in a far better position, as I will benefit from lower costs on the back end - my holding costs will go down as I clear inventory quicker, my marketing/sales go down as I need to spend less to get customers b/c more are coming through the door, etc. As my capital is returned to me sooner, my opportunity costs on capital go down and I can redeploy that capital sooner.

The cost is always being shifted somewhere. But not all costs are equal. The costs to add parking come at a high price per parking stall which are shifted onto the consumer in the form of higher housing costs and also externalized into the public commons in the form of increased congestion, increased air pollution (particulate matter, CO and CO2), and increased usage & wear of city streets. Plus the opportunity costs of more land being devoted to a dead use (storing cars) and less being available for productive use (housing, office/retail space, schools, etc.)

Shifting onto public transit, you move more people at lower cost per passenger mile in absolute dollar terms than by auto. In addition, adding more users to the transit system make it less costly to operate per passenger overall, generally, as the marginal cost of carrying each extra passenger is not great. In addition, it reduces congestion on city streets, reduces wear on city streets, and, most importantly, reduces air pollution so that we can all live longer, healthier lives.

Again, as I stated, part of this issue is that the infrastructure we are talking about are fixed assets (buildings, streets, sidewalks, parking spaces) that are INCREDIBLY difficult and costly to move around and adjust to fluctuating demand.

Incidentally, this is a similar constraint on the air travel industry - airports are very expensive to build, very expensive to maintain, and once you have built one, you can't easily get rid of it. When's the last time you saw an airport for sale on eBay?

I can totally agree with ChinaNob. We were going to buy a distressed property in Healdsburg, drop out, and run a bed and breakfast. For our 2 room B&B the Healdsburg city planners wanted 4 off street parking spots. No place to put them on the property - no deal. Decrepit house will sit unsold forever because it's unusable. All due to parking requirements. They would not even listen to a variance request.

I have a car that took me everywhere I needed to go in my prior home state, but I use my legs and public transit in San Francisco. I still have said car... but it sits unused except once every week or so for the grocery run or a trip to see friends in the East Bay. When that car dies, I'm joining a car share service for sure and not replacing the car ... then you can rent my parking space for $200/month. :)