In SF: an App For Auctioning Off Your Public Parking Spot 427
trbdavies (979982) writes 'Only in San Francisco' used to refer to issues like whether public nudity should be restricted to certain hours of the day. Now I hear it most often in connection with the interplay between the city and tech companies. SF Weekly reports on one such development: 'Anyone who's visited San Francisco for 35 minutes knows that easy parking is a rare find. Enter Paolo Dobrowolny, an Italian tech bro who decided San Francisco was the perfect spot to test out his new experiment. Here's how it works: You find a parking spot, revel a little, let Monkey Parking know where you're located, and watch the bidding begin. Finally, give your spot to the wealthiest victim willing to pay the highest price for your spot. Drive away that much richer.'" Update: 05/08 15:52 GMT by T : I suspect that Dobrowolny's a tech pro, rather than bro, or at least that's what I suspect the Weekly meant to say.
"Tech bro"? (Score:5, Funny)
"Tech bro"?
Go home, Slashdot, you're drunk.
Re:"Tech bro"? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"Tech bro"? (Score:5, Informative)
While I hate the term, the SF Weekly assuredly did use "tech bro" intentionally. You can see that it's not the first time they've used it [google.com], nor are they the only ones using it. The term usually refers to the SOMA, app-of-the-week startup crowd that's more interested in pitching VCs than building something useful.
Legally questionable, doomed to fail! (Score:5, Insightful)
You pay your parking fee to park there.
You are not entitled to resell that right. Only the townhall can.
And finally, I just need to locat the bidder, go there with my car first and wait for the parking fee(s) to expire.
As soon as the car moves away, I get the spot. All legal!
Ah!
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Also, people may go violent on this.
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Yep. violence may go along with this case... I was actually injured in a parking dispute, but it was the incident that arrested a team of fake police officers (or at least police in the wrong area, defying the commands of their chief) and the world is better for it.
An incorrect "lot full" sign was posted at an entry ramp by these scam artists, and they then directed people to park at a restaurant that too few people wanted to eat at to be profitable. Then, a fake higher-than-the-real value ticket was issued
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People don't get violent over ticket scalpers, so why would they do so over parking scalpers either? Store owners, on the other hand, might.
Anyway, this really shouldn't come as surprise - monpolizing a public resource and then extracting rent is, after all, a more efficient way of making profits than actually doing something useful. As technology enables them, the parasites will spread to new niches. This, then, leads to two questions: can the local economy defend itsel
Re:Legally questionable, doomed to fail! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Legally questionable, doomed to fail! (Score:5, Interesting)
Not legally questionable at all - you are being paid to vacate a spot, not resell anything you have purchased from the city.
Not sure what you mean by "locating the bidder" - I assume you mean "locate the spot occupier who is auctioning the spot vacancy", which is far from easy as their location would be hidden behind the apps paywall (with the minimum information you would have up front being the general area the spot is located in, so you aren't bidding on something 10 miles away from where you want to visit), so you would have to win the auction, pay up and only then get the parking spots actual exact location.
Besides, waiting on a public highway for anywhere up to an hour for a parking spot to be vacated isn't exactly what I would call "winning" in your scenario...
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Well, since the person with the auction is presumably already in or very near his car, you might get more than a tow truck showing up if you try that.
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You are good up to "drive to the parking spot".
But there is no parking, so...
Re:Legally questionable, doomed to fail! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, this is an example of government not charging a high enough fee for use of a common public resource. There are lots of examples of this. Usually governments do this in order to provide the resource equally to all people, which is a noble and understandable goal. The downside risk is a tragedy of the commons, where common resources are used to depletion because there is no signal to the users that they are causing harm by depleting it.
In our economic system, we use price as a scarcity signal for buyers and sellers. Price is a ham-fisted signal that is only marginally better than rationing but without using it at all, or by using it poorly, government has opened the door for a private company to create a market in something valuable - parking turnover. Should this application take off (a big "if") government's only practical response is to raise the price of parking to the point that turnover is so high that you can usually find a parking spot quickly without paying somebody to leave. That will be a really high price which will obliterate the goal of providing access to parking for people regardless of their economic situation.
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Re:Legally questionable, doomed to fail! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, this is an example of government not charging a high enough fee for use of a common public resource.
Or perhaps they're just not providing enough fucking parking places.
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Demand for free resources is whatever non-free resources constrain it at. I don't have infinite amount of cars, and thus can't occupy infinite amounts of parking spaces at once.
And "close to infinite" is meaningless. Either demand is finite, in which case it's infinitely far from infinite, or it's infinite. The only reason to use such a nonsensical expression is rhetorical, which makes me wonder what agenda you're pushing - resource constraints are good becaus
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http://sf-planning.org/index.a... [sf-planning.org]
The City thinks, in short, that parking is ugly, and ruins the character of the city.
*shrug*
Re:Legally questionable, doomed to fail! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nope. This is a person taking a common public resource and only making it available for the wealthy. Charging only waht the wealth would pay would severely impact people who make less money.
Te government has a responsibility to all people.
Re:Legally questionable, doomed to fail! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm responding as if you meant "They probably don't display the location of the auctioneer until you've actually won".
If they don't tell me the location of the spot, I'm not bidding. Parking spot location is the top datum required for a bidder to make a rational evaluation, followed closely by the size.
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It would probably give you a general area.
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Many parking meter are moving away form the model. For example, in Portland, OR. you get a sticker with the time. If you leave early, the time 'goes with you' so to speak.
I don't know any parking garage where you can leave and come back to the same space without having to pay again. I have wished for a parking garage like that, where I can pay for a day, and then come and go as I like for that day.
Re:Legally questionable, doomed to fail! (Score:4, Funny)
How many will die thanks to this new app?
Thus freeing up valuable parking spaces!
Perfect for every kind of cunt (Score:5, Funny)
I love this idea!
It helps to connect the rich cunt demographic with the thieving cunt demographic.
Leaving less cuntiness in the world for non-cunts.
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Sounds like a good reason to move somewhere less crowded to me.
"fail for the city planners"
Department of redundancy department.
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SF has fewer parking spots than cars. That is a fail for the city planners and people are forced to pay illegally every day because there are simply no legal spots left.
Faced with the problem of having to spend a long time looking for parking, why not pay somebody to do it for you? I bet you pay people all the time in order to save time in one way or another and you don't consider yourself a cunt.
It's only a fail if you think owning a car is necessary. SF has always had crowded narrow streets designed back when people still used horse and buggies to get around. Its way too late to create endless roads like LA and since even after devoting around a third of land area to roads, LA is still the most congested region in the country...city planners throughout the country are starting to realize that accomodatng more re cars is not sustainable and are emphasizing other forms of transit. SF has had a 'tra
This will end (Score:4, Insightful)
badly.
Hording a public thing you do not own and then scalping it won't go well, and will be banned by the courts.
And when you get in your car to leave, and I stop to get the spot, I sure as hell will not move just because you want to sell something you do not own to someone else. So there is a logistic issue.
how is it hoarding or scalping? (Score:2)
Assuming they're paying for parking and not staying longer than they're allowed to, how is it "hoarding"?
And how is it "scalping"? They're merely offering to delay leaving their spot if someone pays them to do so. Basically they're selling their time.
Ultimately I think the app would need to give the general location to everyone, but the exact spot should only go to the individual selected by the person leaving the spot.
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Nonsense! Let's analyze:
Assuming they're paying for parking and not staying longer than they're allowed to, how is it "hoarding"?
You're right there... hoarding is the process of taking too many. But that doesn't match the article. The story here is that they're taking the last one, then offering to move on for money... but that's also known as "scalping".
And how is it "scalping"? They're merely offering to delay leaving their spot if someone pays them to do so. Basically they're selling their time.
You got that backwards... they're not delay leaving, they're threatening to keep there to the point it causes a time-sensitive worker a problem like job loss.
Ultimately I think the app would need to give the general location to everyone, but the exact spot should only go to the individual selected by the person leaving the spot.
No, the app has to identify where the spot is so people can determine how valuable it is... but wait,
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I think the delay is more likely. Nobody is going to sell a spot they need. They'll sell it to someone else, and then have to stay around until the buyer arrives. You can't sell it to someone and then just leave, allowing some third party to take the spot you sold.
And that's the crux of the problem -- it's public parking, so you have no right to keep someone from parking in it. It's not yours, so you can't sell it. Selling that which one does not own is fraud.
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it's public parking, so you have no right to keep someone from parking in it.
Conversely, nobody has a right to take it from you, either. You have as much right to sit there -- within any relevant time limits -- as anyone else. Delaying your exit for a winning bidder may not be the most civic-minded action you can take, but it's certainly not illegal.
Selling Information (Score:2)
You aren't selling the space. You are selling information that the spot will be available at a certain time.
Would is also be illegal to sell a map showing what times streets generally have full parking? There's no difference.
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You would be selling access to the space, which is not yours to sell. You can't loiter (which is a law in most cities on its own) specifically to deny access to a public resource to the public.
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Valet stands generally get permits to do that if they are doing it on public spaces. If not, then they should be. If it's not required where you are, then it should be.
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And how is it "scalping"? They're merely offering to delay leaving their spot if someone pays them to do so. Basically they're selling their time.
... and the first time someone leaves a spot as soon as the check clears, and someone who didn't pay swipes it, the fraud lawsuits will ensure that this "service" ceases to exist.
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Just use the app, find the spot, then park behind them until they move and refuse any sort of payment, preventing anyone else from having a shot at the parking spot.
That'll pretty much end the problem fairly quickly.
Do what now? (Score:3)
Just use the app, find the spot, then park behind them
I think here we have the very definition of "unclear on the concept".
If there ever WAS parking behind them, they wouldn't be able to sell the spot now would they?
That spot behind them was claimed last week...
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That was kind of the thought I had... Someone gets in the car and posts up the spot meanwhile they are spotted by someone else who stops behind them seeing them get into the car and waits for them to move... when the person they auctioned it off to get's there the other car already has it blocked in it will likely start causing fights.
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Worked out for water and land. But I guess it's different when you're a corporation.
Re:This will end (Score:4, Funny)
Really? Usually when you shoot at corporations, you rarely hit an innocent party.
Not Just Parking.... (Score:2)
Actually, a form of this has been going on in San Diego for some time, but with golf tee times. Torrey Pines is a public golf course that the PUBLIC gets to use. Each and every damn morning, two or three groups (with a dozen or so low-income/shelter 'contractors') phone in and grab ALL of the daily tee times. These folks then turn around and sell them for 3x to 5x the normal public price.
The city can't do a damn thing about them, since each reservation is under a different name......
Re:Not Just Parking.... (Score:4, Informative)
The city can't do a damn thing about them, since each reservation is under a different name......
There must be more to it than that. Either there is some restriction in the local laws preventing them implementing measures against this or they can't be bothered and are claiming they can't to shift the blame to someone else.
One obvious measure to make this much harder for example would be to require users bring ID that matches the name under which the booking was made preventing post-hoc sales of bookings.
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
This ends in destruction of property (Score:2)
This ends in destruction of property.
Either the sellers' or the buyers cars will suffer from spontaneous combustion. And thus will this idea die.
And when they go to the police and say "My car was burned!" the police will reply with something close to a "hmmm. Ok. Did you see who did it? No? Well, tough luck."
Dynamic parking prices (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought San Francisco already had dynamic parking prices to try to use market forces to keep parking available. They have devices to monitor parking utilization. The goal is to typically have one on-street parking spot open per block; somewhere around 85% utilization. If the block is consistently above that, the price increases. If it's below, the price lowers. They adjust the prices by $.25 every month.
From the talk on this that I saw, they generally improved the availability of parking though the dynamic pricing. Employees who park every day would find the cheaper blocks to park on, leaving the busier blocks open for customers.
Maybe the program isn't working as well as they claimed. Maybe the program isn't covering enough of the city, and the approach in the article is of more use in other parts.
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I looked up the talk in question, and here's the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
If you're really interested in urban planning and parking regulations, watch the whole thing, but otherwise the link should go right to where he talks about San Francisco's parking program.
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Reminds me of Boston (Score:5, Informative)
I lived in Boston for a while and the parking is just as bad there as it is in SF. For those of you that have not visited the fine city of Boston, allow me to enlighten you. Boston is an historical city and, as such, has numerous historical buildings. Buildings that cannot be knocked down in order to widen roads. The road that Paul Revere travelled on is just as wide now as it was then.
Lots of one way streets and lots of one hour parking. The cops there would ride around with little bits of chalk. The first time through they would put a chalk mark on the tires of the cars in the one hour parking zone. An hour later they return and any car there with chalk on the tire gets a ticket. So of course it became a game of cat and mouse - cop puts chalk, car owner rubs it off.
When it snows it's worse because the snow plows can't get through so you would have to park on alternate sides of the street depending on the day of the week. If you're caught on the wrong side when the snow plows come through they just tow your car.
The moral of the story is that if you live in Boston, or SF for that matter, take public transportation whenever you can. Driving and parking in either of those cities is a pain in the ass and is to be avoided at all costs.
One of the reasons I left Boston was the traffic and parking. I got sick of it.
Naturally, this app is going to get banned. You don't own the land you are parking your car on. The owner of the parking lot sets the price, not the person renting the spot.
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Though it's not applicable everywhere, I've always loved the compromise they came up with for Old Salem [wikipedia.org]. When the area beg
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Off street parking - now there's a quaint notion. I remember hearing real estate agents gush about off street parking as if it were some huge benefit. Turns out that it was a huge benefit. Where I live now, everyone has off street parking. And on street parking. Heck, you just park wherever the heck you want to. No lines, no waiting.
There are a few things I miss about Boston (not many but a few) but parking is definitely not one of them.
You sure? (Score:2)
I think parking spot [urbandictionary.com] isn't what you think it is. After all it is SF we're talking about here.
A short-lived scheme. (Score:2)
I'm sure the city and private owners will have no trouble with you auctioning off property that isn't yours. The state and IRS will also not have any problem with you collecting this extra income under the table.
It would only be a matter of time before... (Score:2)
If the App proves popular, I'm sure the citizens would ask for the city to put a stop to this practice. The city will respond by making a new penalty for squatting on public spaces for profit and eventually the city's traffic department will start using the App to track down parking places up for auction and issuing parking fines.
Different cities, different strokes (Score:2)
I live in a city where we pay for parking at a meter and get a receipt with the expiration time. Often times, if one is completed with their business and there's a good chunk of time left on the receipt, they will affix it to the meter so that the next person doesn't have to pay. I much prefer my city to San Francisco when it comes to parking etiquette.
Extortion V2.0 (Score:3)
SF used to have homeless people selling parking spaces. You'd see guys standing in empty parking spaces, waving you in, and expecting to be paid. That's been stopped; it's extortion.
So is this.
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Oh stop it. There are enough short sighted assholes who jump to violence. Don't be one.
How about we use the court system? you know like a civilized country.
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Or public transit, like a really civilized country.
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Public transportation is Communism, pure and simple. Oh, it all starts innocently enough -- one day, you're just riding the bus to work. But before you know it, the zombified corpse of Josef Stalin is running amok across the country, nationalizing our industries and forcing our children to learn about evolution and heliocentrism.
No thanks. I'll stick with my armored three-ton Humvee for my ten-mile commute to work.
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You know what, I don't feel the compelling need to argue against people who say "it's communism", because that's not any sort of invalidation of something.
Re: Vigilante (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, we "Yuropeans" (what's that?) don't like rust. But we like spelling, grammar, busses, trains, (and economic cars), disarmed people, welfare, public healthcare, and everything else sane that scares America. Thank you.
Re: "busses"? (Score:2, Informative)
It's not incorrect so much as outdated. http://grammarist.com/spelling/buses-busses/
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Have you ever been to Europe? (Score:2)
What I loved aout Europe was there wasn't a need for a car - unlike here in the most of the States. Not having to worry about parking or getting booted or towed or feeding the meter or .....
People bitch about European taxes. Well, take you car payment, insurance, maintenance, gas, registration, emissions testing and eliminate them.
You now have how much left per month? $400 - $500 - more?
And let's mention the reduction of stress from having to deal with all the chores associated with that car. I have to ma
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What I loved aout Europe was there wasn't a need for a car - unlike here in the most of the States. Not having to worry about parking or getting booted or towed or feeding the meter or .....
People bitch about European taxes. Well, take you car payment, insurance, maintenance, gas, registration, emissions testing and eliminate them.
You now have how much left per month? $400 - $500 - more?
And let's mention the reduction of stress from having to deal with all the chores associated with that car. I have to make time to go and get my car checked for emissions - and it'll pass - but I have to do it for the "privalege" of driving - even though it IS a nessessity here in the States.
Back to taxes...
Add in a single payer medical system - not this Obamacare crap - and those high European taxes do not seem so bad.
They are not perfect, but they have solved some social problems a bit better than we have.
You do realize that the vast majority of Europe is MUCH more densely populated than the US, and most US cities, which makes it more economical to create a public transportation system that can get you just about anywhere efficiently. The closest analogy in the US would be NYC or LA.
Europe population density: http://kids.britannica.com/com... [britannica.com]
US Population Density: http://image.lang-8.com/w0_h0/... [lang-8.com]
San Francisco Population Density: http://geography.wr.usgs.gov/s... [usgs.gov]
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Since they aren't incredibly wasteful for a false sense of "freedom" that only enables stress and accidental deaths?
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We're talking SF here, not civilized countries.
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This is San Francisco , guns are frowned upon.
What you should have said is "Hopefully a vigilante steps forward and shows up only to organize a protest #hateparkingcapitalistscum #payyourfairshare"
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That can happen now, this app doesn't really change that, but I will point out that if it's a public spot, then it really isn't that workers spot to expect to be open.
They are selling something the don't own, so it won't be around long.
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Selling something you don't have, that's reserved to the state. If you do it, it might be a sham.
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You misread. Public doesn't mean state-owned here... it's a privately owned first-come-first-serve system that's getting abused. Same thing happens at the stock market sometimes... it's a "you wanted this, but I'm buying it first and then will sell it to you... PROFIT!"... but usually quickly destroyed by new laws or market rules.
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At the stock exchange, I think such a scheme is called "options" [wikipedia.org].
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Personally I think the government should step in, that's what their job is after all, to ensure that people HAVE to play fair instead of winning by cheating. If you had to pay more tax than you earn with ping races, the whole shit would stop pretty fucking quickly.
A stock exchange was invented to give companies and investors a place to meet. But it has turned into a self serving nightmare that has little, if any, connection to the companies represented anymore. The stock price no longer represents what a co
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I could so see using this app at my old university.
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I'm not selling drugs either. I'm just selling the fact that I'll walk away from this baggie here and won't look back.
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No, they have sold something they do own - Their own time, spent camping in the spot while people bid. As you point out, you can already do what TFS describes, without an app... You just won't optimize your revenue without the ability to list it in a place where a large number of bidders can compete.
Realistically, I really don't see how SF could outlaw this without accidentally banning just about every "we waste our time so you don't
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Unfortunately, they are ALWAYS "in session" (numerous paid absences aside).
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If you take a page from how High Frequency Traders justify their actions, then just explain this as perfectly reasonable arbitrage between the market of people who have parked and people who are looking to park!
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They also practice front running. But I think that door is closing and it will be illegal to front run with fast computers the same way it is already illegal for a human to front run.
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So, somebody can take a 9-to-5 worker's slot
Can you explain this concept of tying up a public parking slot for 8 hours? On-street parking is limited to 2 hours in most cases where I live (a few 4 hour slots, but these are rare). All day parking is typicaly provided in lots or garages, operated by private companies, typically mob associated.
Our city politicians take great pains in ensuring that long term (all day) parking can only be provided by these operators. We lost nearly an entire city council when a private business tried to expand their own p
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It seems like a few things are going on here:
1) We're clearly charging far less for public parking spaces than the market will bear. This is not goo
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This job, did it pay very well? A $100 expense to not be late to a shift seems awfully not worth it unless you are being paid well. Also, seeing as the parking lot is their private property, I wouldn't be surprised if an employee could convince a judge that "being fired for being two seconds late to my job while the employer was allowing third parties to charge $100 for the privilege of parking on their private property" is not just cause and win some damages.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Your not selling the spot, your selling your time to sit and wait to move your car until the other person is there to take the spot.
It's still pretty annoying, but it's not as if they are selling the spot.
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AT&T and Verizon will be dissapointed to hear this.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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You can say the same thing about any large city.
SF is a case of they really need to move out. It like NYC is a geographically constrained city. Cities like Chicago, Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Houston, and even LA offer lower cost housing and less traffic than SF or NYC.
Here is a list of the best downtowns from Liveablity. NYC and SF are no on the list.
http://livability.com/top-10/t... [livability.com]
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Re:I don't understand big cities - off topic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't understand big cities - off topic (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to truck in everything and truck out everything,
The suburbs also have to truck everything in and out: it's not like local farmland and local factories provide even a tiny percentage of the goods and foodstuffs used there.
Rural areas also have to truck most things in and out, for mostly the same reasons. The way the world economy is structured, pretty-much EVERYTHING is trucked in and out from somewhere else. It's a myth that non-urban areas somehow are less reliant on the "outside" than urban areas.
More to the point, there is a massive economy of scale in cities. New brings in goods in bulk, which then require minimal internal redistribution compared to, say, strip malls in suburbia.
All of that aside, cities are where basically all jobs are. Why would anyone start a company that requires skilled workers in a place with a small talent pool? How many coders or engineers live in any rural town, or even within a day's commute of one? How many live within walking distance of a building in New York?
Look at the job listings in any small town, and then look at the job listings in New York or Boston or San Fran. There's nothing to do in exchange for money in small towns and rural places for most of us. There's no career path at all.
Hell, there's also just NOTHING TO DO. We live in New York because we can walk to one of two dozen brunch places on Sunday morning. We can see opera, musical theatre, the symphony, an off-broadway play, slam poetry, a puppet show, or basically anything we want any day of the week. Want to play an obscure German board game? Thousands of people live basically next do and also want to do so. How many people would be interested in that kind of game in a town of 2000 people?
Re:I don't understand big cities - off topic (Score:5, Insightful)
What if I want to go mountain biking? What if I want to go hiking? What if I want to plant a large garden? What if I want to launch high power model rockets? What if I want to ride my motorcycle without traffic? What if I want to rebuild an old car?
It all depends on what you want to do. Opera? Not really my thing? They symphony? Yes but I can do that with a 30 minute drive and minimal traffic where I am at. Theater? The same.
Of course I am not in a town of 2000 people but a town of 200,000 just 25 minutes from Palm Beach which is one of the richest cities in the nation so we get a lot of high end stuff. Did I mention that the crime rate is also very low and the air and water quality is very high?
The ideal location depends on the person. Take a look at the job openings in Melbourne Florida, the Palm Beach area, and Fort Lauderdale. The company that I work for even has it's own fab.
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Massive cities are, by all measures, more efficient than suburban life or rural life. Distribution of resources scales very, very well with population density. Trucking in and out food is orders of magnitude greener than producers sending out 1000 smaller trucks much farther across sprawling rural areas, then everyone trucking themselves around to the grocery store 10-20 minutes away. Wiring power to a 30 floor apartment building is much more efficient than stringing copper to an equal number of suburban ho
Re: I don't understand big cities - off topic (Score:3)
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The only thing that really rises up cost of living in cities is supply vs demand. People who live in cities want to live close by stuff, almost by definition, and they pay a premium for it. That raises up land price, which trickles all the way down to things like groceries (can you imagine the cost of the land to build a large grocery store in SF/Boston/NYC? yeah...).
That explains almost all of the cost difference. Not all of it, but almost.
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Unless, of course, the cities [bettercities.net] massively [streetsblog.org] subsidize [downtownsandiego.org] the suburbs. Then all bets are off.
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1000 smaller trucks delivering stuff
you just described NYC
and the heating part, lots of old buildings have ancient inefficient boilers that pollute. the upper east side has some of the worst air quality. newer burb homes will have newer and efficient boilers
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Wonder how high some of the auctions will get...
Not very high. There are plenty of parking garages that are only slightly more expensive than short term street parking, and cheaper and more convenient if you are going to be staying a while. When I drive to SF, I never waste time searching for street parking. I just go straight from Hwy-101 to the 5th&Mission garage, park my car, take my bicycle off the rack on the back of my car, and pedal away to do my business.
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How is this different than me parking in front of someone, backing up until I'm 2cm from their bumper,
Engage four wheel drive, low range. Move your car, whether you like it or not. Leave.
In this case, I have options.
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Completely different set of people. The people riding tech busses aren't driving. If they were, they could easily get out of the most congested parts of SF and transfer to a bus. Or just drive to work.
The people who are "shitting down peoples throats" do this whenever they see someone with property or a job that they don't have, want, and are not willing to work for. Old news.