Permit zones possible for car-jammed blocks
Melvin Meyer stepped out of his Bernal Heights home Thursday morning, hopped into his car, and moved it around the corner so his wife could squeeze into the space in front of their driveway and unload some groceries.
“It’s a complicated situation,” he said of parking in the neighborhood. “We have people coming here and parking for various events, and a lot of the time we can’t find parking. We drive around a lot looking for parking.”
Bernal Heights is not one of the 29 areas covered by San Francisco’s residential parking permit program, which was created 40 years ago to make it easier for people to park near where they live.
The program has barely been touched since it was created even as the number of people — and cars — in the city has swelled. But that may be about to change.
The city’s Municipal Transportation Agency, after a couple of years of research, plans to test changes in two neighborhoods: northwest Bernal Heights, where Meyer and his wife live, and the rapidly developing Dogpatch. The MTA Board of Directors will consider approving a twoyear experiment, and, if it works, the reforms could go citywide by 2020.
One change would reduce the number of permits allowed in each household. Currently, each residence can have up to four permits, though people can apply for waivers that allow them to have more. The MTA plans to reduce the number of
“It’s a complicated situation . ... We drive around a lot looking for parking.” Melvin Meyer, Bernal Heights resident uncertain about permit-zone proposal
residential permits to two per household and one per licensed driver.
The intent is to reduce the number of vehicles residents can park in their neighborhood. The MTA issues 95,000 residential parking permits a year in the 29 zones where a majority of neighbors have signed petitions requesting the program. Roughly 78,000 spaces are available in those zones and 153,000 households are eligible for permits.
“There are too many cars and not enough curb” in the city, said Kathy Studwell, residential parking program manager for the agency.
In Dogpatch, a former industrial zone undergoing
“We’ve always been sort of the Wild West out here with 24/7” free parking. Bruce Huie, president of the Dogpatch Neighborhood Association
a surge of residential and retail development, planners also want to test a mixture of residential permit parking with paid parking that would have no time limit for visitors on designated blocks. Under the current program, visitors to residential permit zones have to abide by posted time limits, typically two hours. The goal is to set the fee for permits sufficiently high to discourage commuters from using the spaces daily.
Bruce Huie, president of the Dogpatch Neighborhood Association, said the neighborhood supports the idea of paid parking on some blocks but prefers time limits “to keep the flow of available parking,” he said.
The residential parking permit experiment, which coincides with an overall parking plan being developed for the entire Dogpatch, may be controversial in a oncerough-and-tumble neighborhood unaccustomed to regulation.
“It’s all about the expansion of parking availability,” Huie said. “but we’ve always been sort of the Wild West out here with 24/7” free parking.
Other changes to be tested in the two neighborhoods include changing the way an area becomes a residential parking zone. Neighbors are currently required to collect signatures of 50 percent of households to join the program or from 250 residents in larger areas.
The MTA will eliminate that mandate and instead allow residents, businesses or transportation officials to start a process involving planning studies and other potential parking changes.
In Bernal Heights on Thursday, some residents, workers and visitors said they weren’t sold on the experiment but thought it was worth trying.
Ani Huayta, 35, a nanny who cares for two children in the neighborhood, said the program could be helpful to families and child-care providers who are able to get permits. Sometimes, she said, she takes Uber or Lyft to work because it’s too hard to find parking.
“Any way they can make it easier for families to stay in San Francisco instead of moving to Oakland or the suburbs would be great,” she said.
As for Meyer, who said he’s opposed past efforts for residential parking, he shrugged.
“I don’t know if it will work,” he said. “We’ll have to see.” Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle. com twitter: @ctuan