I've never met anyone who lives in SF who thinks buying/auctioning public parking spaces is a good idea. Every single resident I know thinks it's just a shitty thing to do and makes the city worse for everyone (other than the people leaching money off the system I guess). Note that the author of this post lives in Paris. Parking in SF is certainly a pain, but auctioning off spots is just going to lead to fistfights in the street.
Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?
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Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?
#12I was approached several months ago to build an app with the same business model as MonkeyParking's queue-barging-for-cash. I walked away: the world needs less Ayn Randian it's-not-nailed-down douchpreneurship, not more.
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Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?
#13I've never met anyone who lives in SF who thinks buying/auctioning public parking spaces is a good idea. Every single resident I know thinks it's just a shitty thing to do and makes the city worse for everyone (other than the people leaching money off the system I guess). Note that the author of this post lives in Paris. Parking in SF is certainly a pain, but auctioning off spots is just going to lead to fistfights i…
Also I don't understand why they didn't first launch in Paris, which has exactly the same problem, possibly worse.
Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?
#14[deleted]
Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?
#15>San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has just sent a cease-and-desist letter to MonkeyParking a competing company that offers another mobile application related to parking. >In fact there seem to be nothing illegal about sharing or even selling parking information. Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money. That's less about sel…
Selling access to public property wouldn't be profitable if taxpayers weren't subsidizing below-market access to the property in the first place.
Edit: which isn't to say I endorse what these companies are doing. It just seems like another example of how governments (and SF is worse than most) try to fix perceived problems by creating one-off rules, but in doing so create broken incentive structures which lead to new and very real problems. Then they layer on more rules to fix those problems, and the cycle continues.
Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?
#16>San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has just sent a cease-and-desist letter to MonkeyParking a competing company that offers another mobile application related to parking. >In fact there seem to be nothing illegal about sharing or even selling parking information. Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money. That's less about sel…
Selling access to public property wouldn't be profitable if taxpayers weren't subsidizing below-market access to the property in the first place. Edit: which isn't to say I endorse what these companies are doing. It just seems like another example of how governments (and SF is worse than most) try to fix perceived problems by creating one-off rules, but in doing so create broken incentive structures which lead to new…
SF is actually rolling out market-rate variable parking pricing: http://sfpark.org/
Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?
#17If your business model is anything like MonkeyParking's, you're a fucking parasite. Good riddance.
Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?
#18Was it here or somewhere else, I found a very interesting piece about the price of free parking. And how too much parking makes a downtown even worse than it could be. Because it makes it too cheap to use the car.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/04/13/donald-shoup/who-shou...
It also said that SF wanted to introduce a demand based system for parking, which meant it would be a few cents if nobody needed the space and $6 if everyone wanted a space. Of course such a system wasn't realized.
BTW, they could just build a parking space and auction those parking spots, at least it wouldn't be rent seeking. But I guess the prices for a square feet in SF are a little too bit for such a project.
Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?
#19>San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has just sent a cease-and-desist letter to MonkeyParking a competing company that offers another mobile application related to parking. >In fact there seem to be nothing illegal about sharing or even selling parking information. Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money. That's less about sel…
>Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money.
Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?
#20Was it here or somewhere else, I found a very interesting piece about the price of free parking. And how too much parking makes a downtown even worse than it could be. Because it makes it too cheap to use the car. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/04/13/donald-shoup/who-shou... It also said that SF wanted to introduce a demand based system for parking, which meant it would be a few cents if nobody needed the space and…
> It also said that SF wanted to introduce a demand based system for parking, which meant it would be a few cents if nobody needed the space and $6 if everyone wanted a space. Of course such a system wasn't realized.
Demand based parking meters exist in SF. They've been tested in various areas since 2011. They also have an app that helps you find parking using the same sensors that adjust the price.
See: http://sfpark.org/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SFpark