SF cracks down on ‘Monkey Parking’ mobile app

http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/06/23/sf-cracks-down-on-street-parking-cash-apps/

by dmckeon • 12 years ago

51 57 12 years ago

blog.sfgate.com

dmckeon• 12 years ago

Previous discussion at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7702659

sukuriant3• 12 years ago

"MonkeyParking and any motorists using the app face fines of $300 per violation of the city’s law prohibiting selling or contracting for parts of a public street, according to the city attorney."

I was going to ask what the actual law was, but it seems I've found some version of the gist of it here. Where I live (not San Fransisco) we have privatized parking in plots of land that aren't on the public street. Would using this app on places like that in SF be legal?

mahyarm• 12 years ago

I can park nearly all day at moscone center with little time investment for $20-$30, why the hell would I use this then?

sukuriant3• 12 years ago

You wouldn't :) but, it can be hard to find a parking spot in, for example, Seattle on a Friday night.

anigbrowl5• 12 years ago

Maybe. If I understand you correctly, you're talking about selling the information that you're ready to leave a 100% privately owned/operated off-street parking space to someone else who is looking for such a space and is willing to pay the parking fees to the owner/operator, as well as paying you for the tip about the vacant space.

Basically it would depend on whether the parking space vendor's contract with motorists sought to prohibit such arrangements as a condition of use. Of course that's a rather heavy-handed unilateral tactic, but you're not legally required to enter into a parking arrangement with them so if you don't like their terms and conditions, you don't park there in the first place. The mere inconvenience to you of having to seek other parking or transit options doesn't constitute a property interest, so you have no particular claim on the fairness of the T&C. Same logic that allows parking lot operators to disclaim liability for theft/damage to your vehicle.

coldcode• 12 years ago

While I think some of what the city says makes sense, how can a city in the US force a company in Rome to cease and desist? Even Apple might be loath to follow this order since you can't follow every city and country on earth's laws and stay in business.

bitlord_2192• 12 years ago

You send some law enforcement officers out to track down the people selling spaces. Shouldn't be difficult, since they're advertising their location right in the app.

DatBear• 12 years ago

you can't follow every city and country on earth's laws and stay in business.

If you are unable to follow a city or county's laws, then you either need to go about trying to change those laws in that city or country, or not operate there. They released an app specifically to do something that is not legal in a specific city - look at that twitter post.

You can't do something illegal in one city just because it's legal elsewhere - why should an app be allowed to?

anigbrowl5• 12 years ago

Because the company is operating in the US city, of course. Would it be OK to sit in San Francisco and remotely run a service that was illegal in Rome? Of course not, Italian prosecutors would issue demands and then seek a court ruling that they would then ask US courts to enforce. This is the sort of thing that international treaties are for.

EDI for clarity, of course there are no treaties about parking spaces. But treaties usually include general provisions about courts recognizing each others' judgments in criminal and civil matters, not least to prevent cross-border financial fraud, tax evasion and so on. It's not foolproof because not all territories have treaties, eg someone based in Somalia could run an illegal internet business with relative impunity because the US has no treaties with Somalia (as far as I know). On the other hand, countries that have no criminal or commercial treaty relations with other countries tend to be hellholes.

dublinben3• 12 years ago

Of course it's OK to run a service in the US that might be illegal abroad. Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, etc. have all been banned, blocked, and threatened by various foreign governments, even in nominally democratic countries.

US-based Internet companies have flourished due to the relatively hands-off regulations concerning websites. To suddenly apply every foreign law that's ever been written would be a significant chilling effect on business.

dsl3• 12 years ago

I've seen fliers posted in San Francisco. They are obviously operating here in some fashion.

whence• 12 years ago

Here's a better idea: charge market rate for parking on the street, citywide. There's no reason that space should be given away for free.

Use the revenue to build some much needed trains.

jaynos• 12 years ago

San Francisco is actually doing this on a trial basis: http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/san-francisco-cuts-cruising-...

smackfu4• 12 years ago

I parked at a spot in the Mission where the meter rate on the weekend was $6 an hour.

drivingmenuts• 12 years ago

Sounds like you're already neck-deep in "parking for the rich only".

I'd be seriously reconsidering plans to do anything where the parking was that expensive.

sukuriant3• 12 years ago

That ... doesn't seem that expensive to me, coming from someone that lives in Seattle. Then again, I tend to get the day rates, or the late-night rates, which, if memory serves me, are like $15 for the night, while only staying an hour or two for dinner.

mathetic• 12 years ago

Roads are public goods and more importantly they are built with tax money. They are also specifically built for cars to use and without a place to stop they are a bit meaningless in a city.

They might just change this and start charging but that's a pretty stupid idea. Free market is not an answer to everything.

jacobolus• 12 years ago

I recommend you read http://www.uctc.net/papers/351.pdf

Personally, I think we’d all be better off if American cities were friendlier to pedestrians, cyclists, and buses, and stopped catering so heavily to automobiles. Devoting huge amounts of space to free/cheap street parking is incredibly expensive and inefficient, compared to just about any other use.

revelation• 12 years ago

I don't get it. None of your points tell us why we would not charge for parking spots. But you seem to have realized that "cars.. are a bit meaningless in a city", that's the first step.

Right now, "free parking" is a tax on everyone actually living in the city. They pay more for living because prime space is given away for free to store heaps of steel on it. Moreover, building regulations require new projects to provide parking spots proportional to the number of units, even when many city dwellers no longer own a car. That drastically increases development costs in cities that are starved for housing.

jeffdavis• 12 years ago

"Free market is not an answer to everything."

The problem here is one of rationing. There are a limited number of spots; who gets them?

In the current situation, the spaces are free/subsidized, but you pay instead by driving in circles. That's a big waste of time and adds to traffic congestion. Maybe that's more "fair" in some sense, but that doesn't make it good.

The app in question does either nothing or very little to help ration. It allows people who really need to park, and have the money to pay for it, to be more certain that they will get a space, which I guess is something. But it creates so many bad incentives that it's making the problem worse, not better.

The city is in a better position to create market incentives, because they can charge for the entire duration that you're in the space, not just the moment you happen to park. That means people would have no reason to camp out in a space waiting for the price to go up, which means more spaces will be available for useful purposes. It saves time and congestion, but perhaps loses out on some definitions of "fairness".

Any other ideas?

spinlock• 12 years ago

They are also specifically built for cars

Not to be too pedantic but ... the roads in SF were built long before the car was invented. Think about it, if SF were built _for_ cars, why would it be at the end of a peninsula so cars have to cross bridges to get to it? SF was built so that it was easy to access by sea from ships. Cars came much, much later and the issues with parking, etc... really stem from the city not being in a very good location vis a vis cars. I agree that roads are a public good but I think they should be used to provide the greatest economic benefit which, in my opinion, is not to get commuters into the city.

dsl3• 12 years ago

The problem is bigger than a market inefficiency.

San Francisco has been pushing a hard line anti-car agenda, while making no noticeable improvements to transit. MUNI is a disaster being held hostage by unions. Bending to environmentalists to not address legitimate need for parking. Inefficient responses to groups like Critical Mass that breed resentment against bikes. Refusal to address the vagrant problems resulting in crap covered sidewalks. etc.

r00fus• 12 years ago

While it's easy to demonize "environmentalists", it's pretty clear in the SF Bay Area that environmentalists and property owners are in collusion (or property owners are using the environmentalist label to limit supply).

Ultimately, the best way to root-cause a policy issue is to follow the money. Someone is making money from a lack of governance.

thrownaway24242• 12 years ago

This is a quite liberal interpretation of facts in evidence.

"a hard line anti-car agenda"

Seriously? The city has almost half a million parking spaces, nearly all of which are free of charge. There are no congestion charges.

"Inefficient responses to groups like Critical Mass that breed resentment against bikes"

As opposed to the Critical Mass that the car drivers stage every single day at 4:30pm? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAO20jJHNuI

hamzaouazzanic• 12 years ago

I am cofounder of Sweetch, this is exactly our vision. That's why we give you the possibility to donate your money to charities who have a local impact in SF

bitlord_2192• 12 years ago

Good. The idea of a couple guys in Italy making money on trades of public parking spaces in SF baffles me. I assume they're not paying any taxes back to the city that maintains the spaces. How does one possibly defend this?

gizmo686• 12 years ago

They are proving value by solving a market inneficiency (a good, parking spaces, being available at sub-market rates, free). As such, they have a right to some of the profits.

By increasing the cost of parking spaces, they improve the efficiency of allocation by making sure they go to people who value them at $20 before people who value them at 0.003$

Or, more likely, they live outside of US juristiction, so they have plenty of time to make a profit, and when the law does catch up to them, they are likely not looking at anything worse then needing to shut down the service.

forgottenpass• 12 years ago

How does one possibly defend this?

Well, it typically comes across like this (if you notice depends on if you like the company):

Their disruptive innovation is just scaring the shit out of those dinosaurs down at City Hall. Local government are stupid for protecting citizenry financially and/or setting minimum standards for a service. It doesn't matter if the service model is the kind of things that the law is meant to protect or genuinely a case not considered when drafting the law. All valley business models are golden, market success makes them beyond reproach!

PhasmaFelis• 12 years ago

I can't really see any moral difference between this and , say, ticket scalping.

pessimizer2• 12 years ago

At least one of these companies is a pure protection racket.

"ParkModo was recently offering $13 an hour to drivers who would occupy parking spaces in the Mission District during peak weekend times and then sell the spot through its app, a Craigslist job posting showed.

"'Get paid $13.00 per hour just to park!' the ad read. 'Our company is launching an awesome app that rewards people to sell their on-street parking spots before leaving to people who need a spot.'

"It went on to say that: 'Once you are parked, using the app, you will offer the spot for sale. … Once someone purchases the spot, you will complete the transaction with the buyer and then find another space to park in and start the process all over again!'"

It's as if AirBnB were paying people to burn down hotels.

TrainedMonkey• 12 years ago

This is disgusting. Parking in SF is already not easy, and now this cancer is moving in and exacerbating the problem.

cloakandswagger• 12 years ago

Heh, I think you mean exacerbating

oalders• 12 years ago

Looking for a parking spot is already a form of predatory behaviour in many places. Encouraging people to put a dollar value on a public space can't help.

Where do we go from here? An app to sell your spot in the grocery store checkout line?

TheSpiceIsLife• 12 years ago

Oh man! An app to sell your spot in the line at Centrelink - the Australian government agency who manages the 'Unemployment Benefit' aka 'Social Security'.

avacadovich• 12 years ago

Chill people, the city is already doing this by adjusting meter rates with demand to assure that there is will always be a few street parking spaces available for those who are willing to pay for them. Living and parking in SF is not a god given right. EZ John

naturalethic• 12 years ago

Do you even know what a protection racket is? Only one party to this affair goes around threatening people unless they pay up and its not Monkey Parking. edit nor ParkModo

microcolonel• 12 years ago

They're not selling the spots, they're selling prior knowledge of their departure. They have no right or means to block or make exclusive the spots, so what's the problem?

anigbrowl5• 12 years ago

The law prohibits selling or contracting around public parking spaces, ie contracts formed for the purpose of exploiting a public resource are automatically void.

The app itself invites users to 'request a parking spot' and asks 'how much would you pay?' The knowledge of imminent departure is just an instrumentality for gaining occupancy of the parking spot, to claim otherwise is disingenuous. There's a mentality among some hackers that 'the means justify the ends,' ie if you can find some definitional wiggle room on what you're doing it automatically validates the outcome. That works OK on computers, but the law is not a big computer system and does not operate on the same sort of binary logic as computers do.

smackfu4• 12 years ago

Here's the specific law they say that people are violating:

"It shall be unlawful for any person, firm or corporation to enter into a lease, rental agreement or contract of any kind, written or oral, with or without compensation, for the use of any street or sidewalk."

blatherard• 12 years ago

The means of blocking is the car that they have sitting in the spot, which presumably they won't move until the payee shows up. Its also not paying for prior knowledge but payment for vacating, as the Monkey Parking website clearly states: "Get notified about drivers willing to pay you for leaving your parking spot"

aikah• 12 years ago

so what's the problem?

According to the article it's plain illegal.That's the problem.

incision• 12 years ago

'ParkModo was recently offering $13 an hour to drivers who would occupy parking spaces in the Mission District during peak weekend times and then sell the spot through its app, a Craigslist job posting showed.'

Wow, I remember when parking spot squatting was the province of bold homeless men near nightclubs.

This sort of rent-seeking on the commons is particularly distasteful, but simply 'cracking down' on it seems like a wasted opportunity.

If the demand and divide are such that this is a real issue it seems like time for a progressive congestion tax or similar. Collect and invest in infrastructure.

thrownaway24242• 12 years ago

SF already has the nation's most advanced parking space pricing system, called SFPark. However, that is a low bar. The prices change very slowly and some neighborhoods still have not found their equilibrium price (for example, a busy stretch of Valencia has had its price increased in every adjustment round and is now up to $6/hr. Nobody knows the equilibrium price for that area.)

There's also the problem that SFPark isn't very widespread because "local merchants" who are a kind of caveman often oppose it.

hkmurakami• 12 years ago

A generous interpretation of their intent would be that they were trying to inflate their transaction volume in order to create a better user experience for the early adopters trying out their app (a challenge that every e-commerce / marketplace business faces in its early stage).

Still doesn't absolve them of the distasteful nature of their actions, of course.

smackfu4• 12 years ago

Here's the letter (PDF): http://www.sfcityattorney.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?docu...

smoyer• 12 years ago

San Francisco's attorney further stated that they believe it's illegal for anyone outside northern California to create an iPhone application or any web-based property. When asked for additional insight he responded "We've studied the situation and believe we have world-wide jurisdiction to applications running on mobile devices and computers used in our city".

SF cracks down on ‘Monkey Parking’ mobile app

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