[namocat]

I completely agree with this article, but wonder if it's inevitable for someone to jump in and try to make profit off of services for the public good if there are people out there willing to pay for it.

For example, if we had sufficient parking in the city, these startups would never even cause a blip. Someone must have been driving around for half an hour looking for parking and then thought to themselves that, at that point, they would pay someone good money to just be able to find a spot - and suddenly the idea for a business was born...

[wpietri]

I think it's great that people want to solve problems, but this isn't actually solving the problem. It's shifting the problem from rich people to poor people.

In contrast, there are plenty of startups that are actually making the parking problem better. City CarShare and ZipCar are reducing the number of cars in the city by having cars available on demand. GetAround and RelayRides are upping the number of drivers per car. Uber and Lyft (and taxis and transit) let you get somewhere without having to park at all. Parking Panda and Park Circa are turning unused private parking spaces into publicly available inventory. Even Amazon is helping: part of what makes happy to do without a car is the fact that they will make almost anything I want show up in a couple of days.

[aiiane]

Yeah. The real solution to parking in SF is to have fewer people driving, which would involve improving the public transit options.