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    Reading 27

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    Fanni Szeberenyi
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    Reading 27

    Uploaded by

    Fanni Szeberenyi
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    Reading_27

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    Reading 27

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    Fanni Szeberenyi
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    Reading 27

    Let’s say you have to run an errand, a small-ish one. (1) _____. How do you get there? A
    bunch of tiny factors contribute to your decision, but if you have a car one of the biggest is
    probably: Can I park?

    Thousands, maybe millions of people in your city are making small choices like yours every
    day. If parking is abundant and free, more people might drive, creating traffic in the process.
    If it’s scarce or expensive, they might choose alternatives—walking, cycling, hopping on the
    bus.

    (2) _____. That’s why you should pay attention to the San Francisco Municipal
    Transportation Agency’s new parking meter proposal. If the agency has its way, SF will
    become the first major American city to adjust the prices at all of its parking meters based on
    demand.

    “We should be charging the right price for parking given the block and given the time of
    day,” says Hank Willson, who manages parking policy for the SFMTA. The proposal, which
    goes before the city council on Tuesday, would expand a program that's already in place at
    7,000 of the city's 28,000 parking meters. (3) _____. If you’re parking on a popular bar- and
    restaurant-packed block on a Friday night, you can expect to pay more than you would to
    hang in the same spot on a sleepy Monday morning

    Do not worry about airline-style price gouging at peak times, says SFMTA. (4) _____. There
    will also be a meter ceiling and floor: You won’t pay less than 50 cents an hour, or more than
    $8.

    Cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Seattle have experimented with dynamic
    parking pricing before, and the research shows that these schemes tend to work—to a degree.
    San Francisco's own experimentation with the idea goes back to 2008. That year, the federal
    government wrote the city a $20 million check to launch a five-year pilot project focusing on
    a third of the city's meters along some of its more highly trafficked corridors.

    The experiment worked just fine. (5) _____. Double parking dropped, and buses had a
    moderately easier time piloting through affected blocks than before. Plus, the agency reached
    its parking spot occupancy goals about a third of the time, meaning San Franciscans were
    using the meters more frequently overall. (Though the agency says the pilot was not about
    increasing revenue, it made an extra $2 million in net parking money a year.) The proposal
    before city council would expand this project to the rest of the city.

    a) According to observations by SFTMA, circling for parking sank by about 40 percent in the
    affected areas.

    b) You’re stopping by your doctor’s office to pick up a prescription; you gotta return a
    regretted online purchase at the post office.

    c) The agency will give plenty of warning of pricing changes, and prices will only fluctuate
    by 25 cents each month, tops.

    d) It breaks every day into three time bands, and the agency would adjust the prices on each
    block and band based on usage data collected by the city’s wirelessly connected parking
    meters.
    e) Thus, the way your city deals with parking indelibly shapes its character—how people live
    inside it every day.

    f) The goal is to ensure that parking spaces are used and that anyone willing to pay a meter
    can find an empty spot.

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