ABSTRACT
SFpark, San Francisco's new pricing program aims to solve the problems created by charging too much or too little for curb parking. If the price is too high and many curb spaces remain open, nearby stores lose customers, employees lose jobs, and governments lose tax revenue. San Francisco charges the lowest prices possible without creating a parking shortage. Transparent, data-based pricing rules can bypass the usual politics of parking. Because demand dictates the prices, politicians cannot simply raise prices to gain more revenue. Before each price change, SFpark publishes data on the occupancy and prices for all curb spaces in the pilot zones. The price elasticity of demand measures how these price changes affected occupancy rates. The wide range of occupancy changes after each price change shows that many factors other than prices affect parking demand. The wide range of price elasticities suggests that many variables other than price affect parking demand.
