Local parking permits — and fees

Pub date August 13, 2012
WriterTim Redmond
SectionPolitics Blog

So the city’s going to take a look at the neighborhood parking program. Good. Here’s my first question: Why do the car owners get away so cheap?

It costs $64 a month to buy a Muni Fast Pass. It costs at least $300 a month to rent a garage. But if you’re in the neighborhood parking program, you get essentially a guaranteed parking space on a city street — public property — for $104 a YEAR, or about 28 cents a day.

That’s crazy.

I’m not for eliminating the neighborhood parking stickers; the program keeps out-of-town commuters from driving into SF and using residential areas as free parking lots. But let’s make the car owners — who, by the way, are still reaping the Schwarzenegger VLF windfall — pay their fair share. 

Double the fee and you get another $6.5 million. And the parking permits would still be the bargain of the decade.

And then maybe we can get God out of the parking system.