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San Francisco Bans Parking Spot Auctioning App
A couple months ago, we discussed a new phone app being used in San Francisco to auction off parking spaces to the highest bidder. The city has now ordered the app makers to cease and desist, and threatened motorists with a $300 fine for each transaction. City Attorney Dennis Herrera said,
Technology has given rise to many laudable innovations in how we live and work -- and Monkey Parking is not one of them. It's illegal, it puts drivers on the hook for $300 fines, and it creates a predatory private market for public parking spaces that San Franciscans will not tolerate. Worst of all, it encourages drivers to use their mobile devices unsafely — to engage in online bidding wars while driving. People are free to rent out their own private driveways and garage spaces should they choose to do so. But we will not abide businesses that hold hostage on-street public parking spots for their own private profit.
Gotta agree with it being illegal
It's based on holding public space hostage.
No, I don't have to agree with either one.
You are not "buying or selling" a parking spot. You are buying and selling information about where that parking spot is. Those are two VERY different things.
Quote TFA:
San Francisco's Police Code that specifically prohibits individuals and companies from buying, selling or leasing public on-street parking. Police Code section 63(c) further provides that scofflaws -- including drivers who "enter into a lease, rental agreement or contract of any kind" for public parking spots...
The law is very clearly intended to prevent people from "renting" out their favorite parking spot for money, and physically holding them "hostage", as you say.
But that isn't what this app does. It auctions off information about where an available parking space is. You aren't selling the parking space. You're selling the information.
Having said that, I grant that it could be used in ways that are likely illegal... like holding the spot for the person who won the auction. Then you might be said to be actually holding it hostage. But that would mean you -- not the winner of the auction -- were breaking the law. And it would be hard to prove. You fed the meter properly, you're having lunch. Big deal. In order to prove a violation you'd have to prove intent, which is seldom easy.
IANAL but I am familiar with some aspects of law. So let's be clear: the auctioning of information about parking spaces is not illegal. If SF tries to claim it is, they have a long, Lombard-Street-steep hill to climb, and they'd probably lose in the long run.