Parking or transit? The 2007 election in San Francisco

As a sleepy off-year election approaches, San Franciscans face a choice of adding momentum to its Transit First policy or gutting it to add 20,000 more cars to its streets, all in the quest for more parking. Bikescape goes to the Saturday mobilization, chats with Susan King of the Green Party and Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi. Then we head downtown to talk to Dave Snyder to get the big picture on the destructive power of unrestrained parking in cities.



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Proposition A will add $26 million to transit yearly and give more remove politics from the budgeting and planning process. The full text of the measure is here. (pdf)

Proposition H will allow significantly more parking in San Francisco, a prospect that runs counter to the city's entrenched transit-first policy, which uses land-use regulations and funding priorities to discourage use of the private automobile. Here's the text of the measure. (pdf)

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Walk San Francisco, Livable City and The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) are among the many organizations that support A and oppose H.

Donald Shoup wrote the definitive book on The High Cost of Free Parking.