Drive in SF? You will be punished

The head of SFMTA is a bike guy


A guy in the lower Haight hit by our predatory city government:

I'm a resident of lower haight with a parking permit for my motorcycle. In the last 3 weeks I have received 4 tickets for violation of TC315a---Residential parking @ $72/pop. This violation is for exceeding a time limit of 72 hours. However in some cases it has not been 72 hours at all, and I understand it's really my word against theirs, and since DPT never loses it means I'm screwed. In this last instance the time was only 43 hours.

Unhappy Mission district residents meet with the MTA on plans to put parking meters in the Mission. From Mission Local:

The SFMTA’s goal, [consultant Jeffrey]Tumlin said, is to make some parking available while also discouraging people from driving when they could take public transportation, walk or bike. Tumlin, who is originally from Los Angeles, said that he will probably always own a car but understands that he takes up far more street space by driving than when he walks, bikes or uses public transit. 

But does a transit-first policy really work for the Mission, where transit service often falls short? Tumlin acknowledged that Muni service in the neighborhood is “terrible.” And the not-so-quiet elephant in the room was that more meters ultimately equals more revenue for the city. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “revenue from parking fines and fees...generate[s] more than $187 million a year that is pumped directly into the Muni transit system.”

The head of MTA introduced consultant Tumlin:

“We are here to restart the process because we heard loud and clear that we didn’t get it right the first time around. So we took a couple steps back to restart,” said SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin at the beginning of the session.

Reiskin is a bike guy who wants to slow down traffic in the city on behalf of cyclists, as he told the Bicycle Coalition two years ago. 

While he's at it, he wants to soak drivers to pay for the MTA's bloated payroll [Later: MTA tells me it has around 5,000 employees]. Apparently there aren't enough people in the agency to deal with extracting money from city motorists; they have to hire a consultant to tell them how to "get it right"!

Earlier this year, the MTA hired former Bicycle Coalition guy Andy Thornley to work with them on the city's anti-car Jihad. Maybe he was too busy "taking space from cars" to deal with the Mission.

Updating Edward Hopper

Thanks to the Dish