Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?(blog.thefamily.co) |
Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?(blog.thefamily.co) |
>In fact there seem to be nothing illegal about sharing or even selling parking information.
Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money. That's less about selling parking information than selling/leasing public property.
>Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money.
I don't think the app had been out long enough to get a large user base. I only saw it a 2-3 weeks ago and then the gov't acted pretty quickly. So no data on my end. I think most people that read the article about the app imagined the worse case scenario, which in my opinion was likely to happen.
Another scenario would be for tenants who have reserved parking to park out on the streets, wait for someone that's will to buy the place in their apartment. They would then move their car back to their reserved parking space until they see an easy open space to take that's near them. This scenario doesn't take much effort from the person abusing the system.
One of the other parking app companies, ParkModo, is already paying people to do just that. They offer $13/hr to people to go to the Mission District on weekend peak hours, find spots and take them, and then give them up to ParkModo users.
How are people hoarding public parking spaces? Surely it can't be cost effective for people to be repeatedly parking, selling the spot, then driving until they find a new one, but that's the only real abuse I could see of the system.
Can you explain what the problem is with the service for those of us not in SF and not familiar with MonkeyParking?
This is would be the abuse and main concern. The parking situation is bad enough as is without cash incentive to keep a spot longer to see if they can get money from it.
People have brought up in other posts about how it's not worth a person's time to squat/hoard parking spaces. This is very subjective, but the comments are understandable since there are a lot of developers on this board. Last time I saw, a person can sell the space for up to $20. That's a good chunk of money for most people if they can do it once an hour. If people choose not to disclose this extra income they won't be taxed on it (disclosure: I'm not sure if a reporting feature is built into the app).
$20/hr tax free is equivalent to ~$35/hr pre-tax. That's a fair amount of money for most people. I do realize that at $20 a person can just park in a parking garage so it most likely wouldn't be that high unless the driver is spending the entire day in SF.
Edit: which isn't to say I endorse what these companies are doing. It just seems like another example of how governments (and SF is worse than most) try to fix perceived problems by creating one-off rules, but in doing so create broken incentive structures which lead to new and very real problems. Then they layer on more rules to fix those problems, and the cycle continues.
For example, is there any value to society in allowing a licensed individual to drive to some part of a city and park for a modest fee collected by the municipality so that the driver and any passengers can patronize a business that is not within walking distance of wherever their origin was? Or perhaps visit friends or family that reside further than walking allows?
Skirting regulations to privatize a public resource and make money off of it harms society as a whole, so it's better to have as few startups like that as possible.
Also, this article claims that this one, widely supported government action is indicative of a "broader trend", but it offers no further evidence and I'm having trouble thinking of many other cases. Arguably, SF has been rather forgiving of companies which skirt regulations without really harming the public - like AirBnB, Uber, or even Google buses.
One person's responsible legislation is another person's gov't innovation killing regulation.
Consequently, it's not surprising that the defense of their positions ultimately devolve in to convoluted rationalizations for 'do as I say, not as I do'.
It is hard to take it seriously with such exaggerations.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/04/13/donald-shoup/who-shou...
It also said that SF wanted to introduce a demand based system for parking, which meant it would be a few cents if nobody needed the space and $6 if everyone wanted a space. Of course such a system wasn't realized.
BTW, they could just build a parking space and auction those parking spots, at least it wouldn't be rent seeking. But I guess the prices for a square feet in SF are a little too bit for such a project.
Demand based parking meters exist in SF. They've been tested in various areas since 2011. They also have an app that helps you find parking using the same sensors that adjust the price.
See: http://sfpark.org/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SFpark