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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.
Banning this is communism!
This is the free market at work.
It's based on holding public space hostage.
Specific practices like driver using phone while driving, or curb parking time limits can certainly be regulated. But not the basic fact of people exchanging money for information. Dislike it all you want, but people have freedom to do as they want.
I can see this type of service continuing on.
1: Parking spaces are in demand.
2: People are willing to pay cash for one.
3: Other people want money.
All that needs to happen is that the server gets moved offshore, and the app be made as a Web app so it survives being pulled from Apple's store.
I remember this exact same thing happening at a place I worked at when in college. They were such sticklers about being on time for shift that a second late on the phones meant a six month denial of promotions, and being late for any reason three times is an automatic termination. So, people from the neighborhood would fill this place's parking lot up about an hour before shift changed and demand cash... and the employees of this firm would pony up to a C-note in order to get a place, drive a car about a half mile from the office and park in a seedy neighborhood, or be late and stuck on the phones for another half-year with a freeze on raises.
I applaud SF banning this app, but in reality, it won't help, and this is just the start of it. I won't be surprised to see a black market for parking spaces, with people sitting for hours to "sell" theirs, happening soon. Especially home games in university towns or other places where people go for an event.
San Francisco was not getting a cut of the action.
Hey, I've got an app that for $300 you can park anywhere in san francisco! Even someone else's driveway! For $3000 we'll even sell you parking on the bridge!
Good point.
It works when money is no object, and if that's the case, only the city collects. Never move in on the government's racquet - its like moving in on a mobster's racquet - never profitable for long.
It still has some use, but they're just not doing it right. The City admitted that people can rent out their driveways or private garages as parking spaces, so I could easily see a revision of this app that works sort of like Uber but for parking spaces.
People who have parking spaces to spare (apartment blocks, businesses, private homeowners) sell their driveways or parking lots as parking spaces. The people buying pay the property owner a given amount, and a percentage of that comes back to the company as a "finder's fee". You could even have businesses buy parking spaces in people's driveways nearby that are only valid for that business, ie;
Business A has a parking lot that isn't big enough to meet customer capacity at peak hours. They're in a position that would make it very difficult to expand their parking ,but there are nearby homes that have large, unused driveways. Business A can rent some of those driveways and mark them as specifically for use for their customers, so that their customers now have a place to park during peak hours.
I bet you could still make some pretty good money with it, since I'm sure apartment owners would love to get money for letting people use spaces that would otherwise go unused. The only real problem would be enforcement, but I'm sure there's some way around that.
Will understand that this app is a solution, not a problem. It's much safer to drive to a parking spot that you know will be available and sufficient to fit into than circling blocks for half an hour while paying more attention to the curb than traffic and pedestrians. It's city's fault for not designing streets for both residents and expected number of visitors. They shouldn't scapegoat the app for providing a service that people want.
It works when money is no object, and if that's the case, only the city collects. Never move in on the government's racquet - its like moving in on a mobster's racquet - never profitable for long.
Wait, so the government and the mob are into badminton, now?
The company is based in Italy and does not target San Francisco specifically. I don't think San Francisco has standing to sue them.
So it is also illegal to offer somebody money, in person, to let you know when they leave their spot so you can park closer? Technically speaking, you're not paying for the "public" spot, you're paying for the opportunity to park in a more convenient location for a period of time, at which point you leave.
No, it's illegal to squat on a public parking space and demand money to move. Get the difference?
Oops... I meant croquet.
You're being optimistic - I park on the street in San Francisco fairly regularly - I much prefer paying for parking in a garage. This incentivizes people occupying desirable spots for the sole purpose of reselling them, which will lead to hard to park areas becoming even worse. The city needs to build more garages.
They have the SF Park system with smart meters. They've shut down the sensors but are still doing some congestion pricing. If they just turned the sensors back on and continued to roll out smart meters to the whole city, this app would become a non-issue. The fact that it exists at all is simply an indication that parking spaces aren't priced correctly. SF Park was a huge success. They just need to keep pushing it.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
The fact that this app exists means that parking spaces are mispriced. If they were priced correctly, there wouldn't be a black market for them.
One massive problem with scarce parking and no smart system to distribute it is that a lot of vehicles spend a lot of time driving in circles looking/waiting for a spot to turn over. If there were a system that was essentially a free lottery, it could avoid a lot of wasted time and pollution. You'd have to incentivize the occupant somehow though.
something like this:
1. Occupant is about to leave and sends an alert of near term availability.
2. N subscribers get the alert and enter the lottery, lottery executes, winner is selected, and winner is notified that they get the spot, no charge. The lottery could be weighted by karma, say the number of times that lottery participant has yielded a spot to others.
3. Occupant yields their spot to winner, and receives parking karma for next lotto.
4. Society benefits by less traffic, pollution.
To a 3rd party observer there is no difference. Person A gives money to Person B who moves their car so A can take their spot. How are you going to prove B would have moved earlier if not for A? Reading their mind?
I've yet to see downtown parking in any city that wasn't already predatory and a scam. Usually, however, that's perpetrated by the city, not some app.
The city intentionally zones and permits businesses to concentrate tax revenue within a small area.
Buildings get taller, roads get narrower...
Then the city complains about congestion, charges insane fees for parking, trys to charge to even bring a car downtown.
I know! Bycycles will fix it! So they take away the parking lane and turn it into a bike lane... Now the bike racks are full. Better start charging for bike parking to!
These issues are directly caused by the city governments themselves. I've no sympathy at all for them. Stop concentrating population density, let it spread out. I know you get a lot of tax revenue because of it. But how much is it costing?
I lived in a town home in a college town. Our landlord rented our parking lot out during football games. The landlords made big bucks, but residents had to prove they lived there in order to avoid the parking fee.
That sounds like a great response from the police...
And what exact public law is being broken now?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
I wonder if someone could aggregate and sell realtime information about empty parking spaces.
It's not as powerful (or sleazy) as holding parking spaces ransom, but it's probably a lot harder for SF to fight, due to First Amendment issues.
City parking authority claims the moral high ground?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
How are you going to prove B would have moved earlier if not for A? Reading their mind?
Um, they advertised the space on the app?
If you have a parking space for renting there, I'm pretty sure that would be illegal. Same if they decided to rent your bedroom to a tourist as a B&B. Your rental agreement provided you with your place (I'm guessing an apartment) and a parking spot. The landlord is not able to then legally rent out to someone else what you are already renting.
ianal, but damn, there are some things that are pretty bloody obvious and well documented to even the public.
You are wrong. The car that would have taken the spot the instant it was available is now circling the block for half an hour instead of the person who used the app. And don't forget that using the app means a parked person stays in the spot longer than normal, which adds to the parking problem. It is bad in every possible way.
Yes - damn the city planners of the 1870's for not anticipating the conditions of 2014.
They may not be able to do much to the company if it has no US assets, but they can certainly monitor the parking spots up for sale and catch people in the act.
1. Reserve all the conference rooms in the building for the next 10 years
2. Build an app to auction conference rooms
3. $$$ Profit!!!! $$$
xx
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
A counter-example to this would be the parking situation at the newly constructed Levi stadium for the SF 49'ers. They don't have enough game-day parking spaces for the stadium and they were assuming that some of the surrounding office complexes would be willing to become pay-parking lots on Sunday-gamedays... Sadly, only a few of them "bit" on this opportunity. The purported reason for this is the increase in liability insurance and maintenance (e.g., cleanup costs) involved would not make it worth the hassle to operate as public-parking lot for 8 days a year.
Despite sounding like a good idea, apparently in real life the margin on parking is so low that you can't really do it on a part time basis and make it worth your while. It's not that they are doing it wrong, their business model is to simply privatize the profit and socializing the liability and risks (e.g. city maintenance and self-insurance costs) not unlike a big-bad-bank...
You can't sell something you don't own. But what you could do is sell information, which you do own. In exchange for a set fee of $1, you can state the exact location you just vacated. No 'guarantee' of getting the spot, so you are not selling the spot. Instead you are selling the location data that is time sensitive. Specifically that means, if someone else comes along and takes the spot before your buyer arrives, the buyer is out of luck.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
You're assuming a secret offer from B to A and secret acceptance from A to B. But B has published their offer on the app -- which can be shown to the third party observer -- and no mind reading is involved.
The legal basis for regulating this out of existence is, quite simply, keeping the peace.
Person C can deny person A the right to take the spot from person B. Easily. Person C can use the app to locate the parking spot, drive to it, and then refuse to move away in order to let person A assume the spot. To avoid blocking traffic, person C could even drop a passenger off at the spot to occupy it the moment that person B actually leaves, thus securing the spot for person C. Anyone can be person C simply by using the app and refusing to pay.
Oh the battles that would generate... so we don't let it. Publishing the offer to move is against the law. End of story.
How are you going to prove B would have moved earlier if not for A? Reading their mind?
Um, they advertised the space on the app?
Also, the fact that we just watched this hypothetical exchange.
If I saw someone pull up to an already-parked car, then exchange money with the person loitering in said parked car, then said parked car leaves, making sure that new car gets the spot he just vacated, I'd think I have all the proof I need that someone just sold access to public land. The ad records from the server are just icing on the cake.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
But we will not abide businesses that hold hostage on-street public parking spots for their own private profit.
So, they are going to make car carriers unload on dealer's lots?
Too bad. I had a great business plan for a shipping company that needs no loading dock space because we were going to load and unload in the middle of city streets.
Have gnu, will travel.
If they are holding the space, and properly paying for it until somebody who has offered them sufficient money for that space arrives, then aside from encouraging people to use their phones while driving, which is generally considered an unsafe practice, what are they doing wrong, exactly?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Alternate One: Get close to your destination. Pull out your phone,run into someone while futzing with your phone...
The place to pull over to use your phone to look for a parking space is called a parking space.
and we slashdotted the bloody attorney site or is it just me not being able to click properly???
This isn't exactly the same, but it reminds me of the restaurant seating problem that happens when patrons, upon seeing that there's limited seating, have members of their party camp on a table before they've ordered. It exacerbated the problem. People who have just got their food can't find a seat because table-campers have what would be empty seats.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
I have three points to make:
First, a city does not have the authority to regulate the conduct of persons within its boundaries (and even outside as SF seems to be claiming) however it wants. Sure, it can regulate the class of people who occupy parking spaces, and it can tax the people who use them. What it cannot do is (1) regulate the conduct of persons outside of its bounds who want information about those parking spaces, (2) regulate what applications people run on their devices and the commerce they engage in without a clear public interest in doing so, (3) stop them from expressing themselves where there is no criminal conduct or civil obligation involved (a.k.a. "free speech"), and (4) pass ordinances that are beyond the scope of the authority granted to them by the state (I doubt the State of CA has granted its cities the authority to regulate software). There's four strong reasonings available to the offender when the city tries to enforce this ordinance.
Second, there's no practical way the city will be able to enforce this. Hell, most places don't enforce speeding and traffic laws because its too bothersome/costly to the police to do so. How is the city going to detect illegal activity, when it can't snoop on wireless traffic without a warrant?
Third, the city is the cause of this market in the first place. If the city would oversee the parking situation such that there was sufficient parking, then there wouldn't be a market for this application to exploit. The city should provide more parking &/| transport, not try to punish people for getting around.
Fourth, their city council is stupid for doing so: they are dissuading people from coming into their city where they would be spending money & paying more in sales and other taxes. But then we're talking about CA: the land where original idiotic laws are common...
Business A has a parking lot that isn't big enough to meet customer capacity at peak hours. They're in a position that would make it very difficult to expand their parking, but there are nearby homes that have large, unused driveways.
Not, I think, a very realistic scenario.
Homes with unusually large, unused, driveways aren't often to be found in a commercial district.
Homeowners can get very prickly about strangers using off-main-street residential parking. Police, fire and ambulance services also. When neighboring driveways begin to fill, you'll get an earful at the next meeting of the town council or the zoning board.
But we will not abide businesses that hold hostage on-street public parking spots for their own private profit
On the other hand, it's okay when we do it!
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
We're not getting any money out of this.
*BANNED*
Ok, then the city should implement it and maintain a queue. Then they just need to install a sensor on all the spots which only allows the correct user to plug the meter (or simply activates a sign marking as "Occupied" if cost free) when the correct cell phone is identified to be proximal to it.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Though some allowances might need to be made for drivers lacking cell phones.
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
No, it's illegal to squat on a public parking space
Squat? That typically means you are occupying a place without paying for it.
If people are putting money in the meters, then they are there lawfully, not squatting.
Person C can deny person A the right to take the spot from person B. Easily. Person C can use the app to locate the parking spot, drive to it, and then refuse to move away in order to let person A assume the spot.
You can't block people from entering a public parking spot, that's ridiculous. Person C is breaking an existing law, no need to add regulation to persons A and B.
Person C could cut in and take the spot, and then put money in the meter. That's fine. But that can happen today without the app... I've had parking spots that I claimed (blinker was on!) stolen from me. I didn't call the cops.
I've had parking spots that I claimed (blinker was on!) stolen from me. I didn't call the cops.
Jamaica Man Killed in Gun Battle Over Parking Space
Miami Barber Shot, Killed Over Parking Spot
Man Sentenced in Shooting Over Parking Space
Man critically hurt in Gold Coast shooting over parking spot
People are insane. Never forget this.
It's city's fault for not designing streets for both residents and expected number of visitors
No, it's the visitor's fault for not taking public transit. San Francisco has some of the best public transit in the country. BART is ~$4 round trip, runs past 1 AM and parking at the stations is free on the weekend. And now the rent is higher than NYC, any spare space should be devoted to housing.
It's vastly more efficient use of space to park your car outside the city and make the city navigatable with transit (see Tokyo, Berlin, Prague, etc).
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Change the app so that a "seller" isn't demanding payment, he just makes it known that if, say, $20 shows up in his account from some generous donor, he'll be so anxious to spend his windfall that he'll drive away immediately. The "buyer" would wait until he was right there, transfer the money via cell phone, and pull in the spot. The "seller" doesn't know who his benefactor is, it could have been anyone. Think of it as a variant of the Amazon wishlist. Since there's no direct quid pro quo, no laws were violated.
Is that people have figured out a way around their "environmentally friendly" programs: http://www.sfenvironment.org/c...
"What's more, commuter benefits encourage people to walk, bike, rideshare and take transit to work. This helps relieve traffic congestion and improve air quality, making our cities and regions better places to live." SF gets a subsidy from the feds, SF doesn't have to provide so much parking because they promote walking, biking, ridesharing, etc.
It seems to me that this black market is a result of inadequate planning. SF would rather point their finger at people smarter than they are...
Croquet is that game where you hit stuff with hammers, right? That's about like most urban areas' approach to parking enforcement.
I think this could be made legit with a simple modification: company pays owner of parked car for information on when he'll leave that spot (probably with updates either manually or via GPS tracking). Driver pays company for information on which parking spots will be vacated soon in a given area at a given time. Net result should be a small gain in the city's efficiency (less pollution, fuel, traffic, wasted time), albeit reduced by the opposite effects on people who don't use the information. Still a net positive as can be seen by considering what would happen if everyone used the information Could be non-commercialized by using karma transfers instead of money.
Also, since most apps these days track you via GPS, slightly inferior information could be automatically gathered and sold.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I thought of the solution!
Just be a good person and work hard wherever you live. That way, you, your kids, and your friends won't want to move to a fuck-all overcrowded megapolis and scratch out a living in a hyper-competitve environment just to try to 'get ahead'. Simple. No more parking problems.
Perhaps you missed the point I said where the person holding the space is actively paying for the use of that space until a person that they are willing to surrender it to (because enough money has been offered) arrives at the location.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What this parking app (and there are a couple of others too) does is encourage people to drive into town and make money by parking in spots, auctioning it off, then driving to the next one and repeating the process.
Just guess how much chaos this will cause when a lot of people start doing this professionally.
I see every spot taken by a car with someone in the driver's seat. I see this escalating into organized groups doing this, and then those groups start fighting over territories.
"ParkModo, which appears poised to launch later this week, according to recent employment postings on Craigslist, will employ drivers at a rate of $13.00 per hour to occupy public parking spaces in the Mission District."
Uh huh. Assholes gaming a system. I see the next revenue source for tweakers.
>Yes - damn the city planners of the 1870's for not anticipating the conditions of 2014.
I know, right? It's not like all of San Francisco ever got hit by a massive earthquake and fire or something.
Actually, they did have their chance to rebuild the city right - they knew their layout was shit and considered it - the trouble was figuring out how property rights would work when you moved all of the lots around was too much of a nightmare for the city, especially given that they'd lost all their records in the fire. So they were basically forced to allow everyone to rebuild right where they were before, using a city layout that would make old European cities cry from dysfunction.
Not "right" by the OP's definition, no. Even in 1906 they could not have reasonably predicted the conditions of 2014.
If you have a parking space for renting there, I'm pretty sure that would be illegal. Same if they decided to rent your bedroom to a tourist as a B&B. Your rental agreement provided you with your place (I'm guessing an apartment) and a parking spot. The landlord is not able to then legally rent out to someone else what you are already renting. ianal, but damn, there are some things that are pretty bloody obvious and well documented to even the public.
We didn't have assigned stalls in the parking lot (indeed, the stalls weren't even numbered). In non-game days it was first-come first-served. Each resident was allowed to register a single vehicle with the office. Temporary passes were available for visitors, and parking stickers were only enforced after hours or on game day.
Can someone familiar with the NYC concept of "key money," a wad of cash handed over for the right to assume a lease on an apartment (that's what I've read, not necessarily the whole story) comment on the similarity or difference between that cash transaction and this one?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Odds are, the reason you needed to prove you lived there was because there were people who were neither paying the fee for renting a space nor living at the apartments who were taking up spaces--some places issue placards and/or specific spots that go with the place, sometimes entirely because the place has had problems with non-residents using the lot as a public parking lot to the point of crowding out residents.
That said, there still needs to be sufficient spaces for residents' use, and it should be made clear before any money changes hands that this goes on--with a chance to ask questions like "So, is the fee charged for any guest parking, or just when there's a game?"
>Not "right" by the OP's definition, no. Even in 1906 they could not have reasonably predicted the conditions of 2014.
They wanted to widen and straighten the streets. This would have made a pretty significant impact on the road conditions in SF, even today.
Could you imagine what London would be like today if they didn't remodel a bit after 1666?
The topic under discussion is parking - which is sensitive to the *length* of the streets, and only in unusual conditions sensitive to the *width*.
It's almost like you're claiming all work is productive and useful.
That, is outright censorship. If you want to target the users for using it to do something entirely questionable, fine, but leave the developers alone...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Are you seriously suggesting that SF public transit is friendly to visitors unfamiliar with the city? Please explain to me how do I take BART to sunset district.