A wise man told me that the only way to know about parking, on or off street, was to actually go out and walk around the cars and see what is happening. He abhors managers who sit in offices and have no clue what color the inside of their garage is painted. He also rails at on street administrators who have never seen the “rusty signs on Main Street” or never tried to park at noon in the area around the mall.
Perhaps that’s part of the problem when SFpark manager Jay Primus gave his presentation at the parking seminar in Phoenix last month. He was assaulted by half a dozen parking managers, consultants, and operators with specific questions about data collection and other issues in his program. He seemed confused that someone would actually disagree with the program.
The people who were challenging him had decades of on street experience running parking programs, designing parking programs, and the like. They had earned their “Street Creds” on the front lines of parking. They had spent hours on the streets of America observing, collecting data, and seeing how differing programs worked. They knew their stuff by experience.
I wonder if they could have helped SFpark in its formative years. We will never know.
JVH
