Vincent McGarey instailling the new smart meter

Vincent McGarey and others from the city are spending the next couple of days installing smart meters on Valencia and Mission Streets as well as a few side streets.

The meters will work with the sensors already plugged into the asphalt to read whether a space is clear or filled. That information will go to a data center that will raise or lower parking prices depending on demand.

Hello, I’m a parking sensor.

The installations will go on through December in seven pilot areas that include 6,000 of the city’s 25,000 metered spaces and 12,250 spaces in city-owned garages. For more information on SF Park, go here.

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Founder/Executive Editor. I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019 when I retired. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still there.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how you make that long-held interest in local news sustainable. The answer continues to elude me.

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