After a nearly two-year process and a survey with thousands of respondents, the city is now embarking on a year-long pilot project to figure out how parking on the Dolores Street median on weekends might best be regulated.
The Sunday parking is technically illegal but de facto permitted.
The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency’s Board of Directors voted to pursue a pilot program suggested by agency staff that would legalize median parking, or the practice of turning a traffic lane next to the center median into parking areas, on Dolores Street for a year.
At the same time it would restrict the specific areas and times in which parking is allowed. These restrictions, they said, would reduce collisions and improve emergency response times through the area.
“Getting info and figuring out how we can do this better by having this pilot is the only way we can really move forward,” said Director Gwyneth Borden.
Religious institutions, whose congregants overwhelmingly support the preservation of median parking according to a transit agency survey, praised the proposal as a compromise.
Several congregants and faith leaders told the directors that those who travel to services by car tend to have no other choice, and would be unable to participate in their faith communities if median parking were banned.
“Something as mundane as median parking will actually hinder or potentially shut down our faith members,” said Kyung Kim, a member of Cornerstone Church as well as the citizen advisory group.
Parking in the middle of the road to attend religious services has a long history. Mission resident Jim Salinas Sr. said he remembered seeing cars parked there when he attended church services at the Mission Dolores Basilica as a young child in the 1960s.
The director of the museum at that church, Andrew Galvan, said the practice goes back even farther.
“My ancestors were baptized in that same Mission church in the year 1794,” Galvan said. “For many many years, my ancestors hooked their horses to the horse stalls in the center of the street – and now we park our cars, on occasion, there.”
Much of the opposition to median parking from residents has come from a frustration that a blind eye is turned to technically illegal practices for religious organizations, according to the survey results. One opponent to the practice suggested simply placing parking meters in the area to equitably provide more parking.
The pilot program approved today will allow median parking for anyone on weekends, though specific hours have not yet been chosen. Gustavo Torres, who works at Mission Dolores Basilica, said churchgoers are happy to have the parking available to everyone.
“We want to come together and want everyone in the community to use median parking,” Torres said. “We’ll work together with SFMTA and anyone else to enforce parking stipulations and rules.”
The recommendation for the pilot program, however, was somewhat at odds with a 4-3 vote a citizen advisory group took in February to completely eliminate median parking. That vote, the agency says, could not be used as an official recommendation to the directors because two members were absent and it did not reach a five-vote majority.
Elizabeth Zitrin, one of the members of the advisory group, has long held that the vote of the advisory group was unfairly suppressed.
“The recommendation was that there be no median parking permitted on Dolores or Guerrero,” Zitrin told the board. She called the process to date “an illegitimate process that will not allow the members community members to be heard.”
Before the vote, Cheryl Brinkman, one of the directors, asked that if the pilot program be initiated, transit planners take on a greater role of figuring out how to manage parking in the area, a resource in notoriously short supply.
“I know it feels like we give you some impossible projects but here’s another one,” she told transit staff. “Let’s try to manage parking in this neighborhood…We just need to move forward. We can’t turn a blind eye to this.”
The SFMTA Advisory Committee on Dolores and Guerrero Parking recommended that NO median parking on either Dolores or Guerrero be permitted. This was not the result SFMTA wanted so they just steamrolled over it and said it didn’t exist and made a different recommendation. This is government by bullying, by administrative fiat. They pretended to care what the people of the City think. SFMTA surveyed everyone and 74% of the residents of the area said they want NO parking on the Dolores and Guerrero medians. To no effect. Not the result SFMTA wanted so they just ignored it.
We as residents are told we are a Transit First city. We don’t need parking. We don’t need cars. We should take MUNI. But select religious organizations, who were out if force with their non-SF congregants, are free to park illegally. Why don’t they take public transit or carpool or organize shuttles?
We will not give up, but this is shameless favoritism for a church over the interests of the neighborhood and the interests of the entire city.
Shameful conduct by SFMTA, but the people will persevere.
Is this only for Church lady’s or can everybody park there?
Everyone can park there!
Monday thru Friday private Tech buses double park, share stops with MUNI, and park in the streets with City Halls (pardon the pun) “blessing”. So, If the City Hall and the SFMTA can make “special allowances” for healthy young able bodied tech workers why cant they extend the same “special allowance” for elderly and disabled congregants to attend church one day a week?
Many elderly and disabled congregants have mobility disabilities and rely heavily on private vehicles. In fact, elderly and disabled drive to church more than any other demographic in the city. The city prioritizes transit walking and bicycling over driving in a city where most elderly people depend on cars to attend church.
The San Francisco Interfaith Council conducted a “Transit Technology Survey in 2014. Disseminated by the SFIC to its 3,200 e-subscribers from February
5-26, 2014, congregation leaders were asked to make hard copies and
administer the survey at the fellowship hour of their primary worship
service to ensure that all in attendance could participate.
Of the 558 who responded to the “age range” demographic question, 2.5% fell
into the 18-24 age range; 12.5% in the 25-33 age range; 16% in the 34-44
age range; 20% in the 45 -54 age range, 25% in the 55 -65 age range;
and 24% in the 66 or older age range. Twenty-three congregations in all
but one supervisorial district participated. 601 congregants from eleven
faith traditions responded. 67% of respondents travel to worship by automobile; 19% by public transit; 2% by bicycle and 12% walk.
This pilot program is finally a step in the right direction for the SFMTA.
For the record, this person is going around every news article posting this exact same thing. It is clear they have an axe to grind here, and should be taken with a grain of salt. “John Smith”… Sure.