Comment Log Display

What you have now, on car parking is weak. Within your "Role of
Local Governments" (Page 26), you state you will help develop tools
and best practices for local government. On Page 48-49, you mention
car parking; also on pages C-50, C-52 ("•Promote employee
transit incentive programs, including, telework, carpooling, and
parking cash-out policies."), and finally on Page C-78. Nowhere is
the concept of "unbundling the cost of parking" presented. Cashout
is mentioned but not defined. The state cashout law does more harm
than good to this important concept. It needs a more general
definition.

I would like to help you strengthen your work with respect to car
parking. The potential is huge.

Cashout: See Charts 7 - 27 of my Power Point Charts.
(http://moderntransit.org/sdc/Vista_8_7_08).
They provide a more generalized form of Cashout. Please study the
details. Our Industrial Parks need cashout to transform them to a
form that is denser, more mixed use, and less dependant on
driving.

Intelligent Parking: This is where so-called "pay parking" is
feasible, which should be almost everywhere if we are going to
escape the human catastrophe of global warming. "Intelligent
Parking" is where parking is fully shared, has its cost fully
unbundled in all cases, is priced to guarantee vacancy, and uses
good technology. It is detailed in my report, "Intelligent
Parking", http://moderntransit.org/sdc/IntelligentParking6. As
shown in the tables in both of these documents, giving people back
their right to choose whether or not they want to pay for parking
will greatly reduce driving. This has been fully documented. We can
expect at least a 23% drop in driving whenever we unbundle the cost
of car parking. This is the most cost-effective way to reduce
driving. It is cheaper than free because it will result in less
parking being needed and parking is expensive.

I need your help. SANDAG is currently developing a "Smart Growth
Design Guideline". I have submitted numerous written comments,
talked to them on the phone, given a 90 minute presentation on
parking, and gone to their public meetings where I spoke
passionately about the need to have their "Guidelines" include good
parking policies. I am failing to have any effect on their very
outdated work. Their "Guidelines" are going to be 10 years old in
their thinking about parking. Because they say "innovative TDM",
they think they are doing a great job.

Our state needs to develop a model off-street parking ordinance
that implements "Intelligent Parking". The hardware and software
needs to be perfected and implemented. San Francisco is getting
close. Any team of programmers that help to put on races (Bay to
Breakers, for example) could implement most of Intelligent Parking.


Highway funding: Gas taxes are imprecise because they do not
account for who is driving where and at what time. Gas taxes have
no future anyway, since cars will get better and better mileage. We
need PAYD road financing. All license-plate tags in 2010 should
contain a RFID. Sensor/transmitters need to start collecting data
for automatic billing. Roads should be priced so that they produce
an agree-to rate of return on the VALUE of the lane. Note that I
said value. Value is the price of land plus construction, at the
time of collection. If this is done properly, the state should be
able to sell off any or all of our lanes at a fair market,
replacement cost. If needed, congestion pricing can be added in to
ensure free flow at all times. This approach will have the
additional advantage of allowing our state to reduce all taxes and
balance its budget. Thank you for getting at least a little bit
sane in the "Pricing" section of your document,
http://www.catc.ca.gov/programs/rtp/Adopted_Addendum_2007_RTP_Guidelines.pdf.
(Our Transportation Commission is light years ahead of SANDAG.)