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Narrator: In the pantheon of great American cities
San Francisco is one of a kind. When it comes to parking headaches
it is unfortunately all too typical. Thomas Valley: There's typically
a severe shortage of parking, so being able to find an available space is
challenging. Sara: I actually live in Berkeley and
coming into the city is, you know, I don't do it as much, because I think about
parking
it's going to be a hassle. Jay Primus: Circling around for 10 minutes to find a parking space
isn't just tremendously inconvenient it's an enormous waste of time
it's a senseless use of fuel of greenhouse gas emissions
Narrator: Enter SF Park, the city's website and mobile app
bringing real time parking information to drivers through wireless
Primus: So, there's two kinds of real time data that we're pushing out in our data feed
either from garages or from on street at metered spaces. The garages are
pretty simple.
Every time someone goes in or out of the gate arm that
system is counting how many cars are in the garage. That data is sent to us
to our data management system. The other real time data feed we are getting
is from the in ground sensors at metered parking spaces.
Valley: So, it's a hockey puck size sensor that gets embedded
in the pavement or concrete underneath the parking space and it sends
Wireless information through our wireless network
about the arrival and departure of vehicles in the parking spaces
Narrator: The data is then converted and displayed to drivers in real time through
the city's mobile app
Valley: The app shows you the color-coded map of the city
green areas mean that you have the best likelihood of finding parking
and blue areas mean that you have a
likely chance of finding parking and red areas are probably places you should
not bother trying to find parking. Narrator: Clicking on any colored area also gives the
hourly cost of parking. The city uses flexible pricing combined with parking
data
to steer drivers toward lesser used parking areas. Primus: Every eight weeks or so
we look at occupancy data. Were there open spaces available or not
on that block, during that time of day, and we gradually adjust rates
up or down by twenty five cents.Gradually zeroing in on that just right price and we're gradually seeing things
move in the right direction.
That it is getting easier to find a parking space. That we are redistributing using price.
Sara: Because of this app parking is a lot easier to find.
now I'm coming into the city a lot more than I used to.
Primus: Never before has a city assembled this kind of data from sensors on streets where we can finally know what's
happening
parking on the street. combining that with data from years, from citations
transit vehicle, sales tax, to really achieve our goals.Whether for the transportation
system, for congestion, for quality of life.
Environment. This is a good first step toward figuring out how we can do this better