Sundays in San Francisco bring with them a familiar scene: hundreds of cars, illegally double parked, lining the streets for blocks surrounding prominent churches. As many churchgoers drive to their religious services, this makeshift response to insufficient street parking causes both widespread congestion and potentially dangerous traffic for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists alike. That this practice has been tacitly permitted by SFPD and SFMTA for years evokes a wide range of emotions from church neighbors and nearby business owners. The SFMTA is now in the process of developing an official policy on the illegal double parking, and the agency wants your input.
In a nine-question survey, the agency seeks to understand how you, the average Joe/Jane, feel about the median parking along two specific streets: Dolores Street and Guerrero Street between 14th and 21st streets.
"Vehicles parked along the center medians of Dolores and Guerrero streets have been a common occurrence for years," begins the survey. "However, despite the practice's longstanding nature, it has in turn not been equally available to all potential users, been sporadically enforced, has at times generated unsafe conditions due to drivers parking in intersections and between medians, and has caused some vegetation along the Guerrero center medians to be damaged. "
In a conversation with Mission Local, SFMTA spokesperson Kristen Holland said that the current state of affairs relies on informal agreements between churches and neighbors, and that the SF Municipal Transportation Authority has never officially recognized the setup.
In addition to the survey, SFMTA has already begun to evaluate various suggested solutions to the obviously problematic status quo.
Regardless of the outcome, now is your chance to take a five minute survey (that includes an open-ended response option) that some poor soul (intern?) at SFMTA will have to read. We recommend you make the best of it.
