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�� 5 curb parking by luring long-term parkers out of prime spaces with the promise of convenience and a good deal. In major cities with strong transit service, such as San Francisco and Philadelphia, permits and other discounts for long-term parkers are often frowned upon. This is due to the fact that it assists automobile commuters. Older and bigger cities with great transit systems and limited roadway capacity often seek to incentivize commuting by transit while seeking to disincentivize commuting by automobile. This strategy has environmental and economic merits, but is only feasible in areas with world-class transit systems. Caltrain and Samtrans aze great assets, but they are not on par with San Francisco Muni, the New York subway, the Washington Metro, or the London "Tube." In Redwood City we should seek to incentivize transit ridership whenever possible while also acknowledging the reality that most Downtown workers will be arriving by automobile. Time Limits Another tactic that cities use to create turnover of prime parking spaces is to limit the time that one may park in a given space. Violators of the time limit are issued a citation. Downtown Redwood City's time limits, which are in effect from 9am to 6pm Monday through Friday, are shown in Fi�ure 7 on Page 39. It seems like this would be a simple and effective system, but it often is not. For one thing, it is very difficult to set the time limits. Do we arbitrarily pick time limits? That doesn't sound like a good idea, but it seems to be the method used by some cities. Do we try to anticipate how much time each business's customers need to park? This CofTee Sandwich oay seems more rational, but how do we do it? To nouse shop spa illustrate the difficulties in doing this, let us consider a hypothetical downtown block which has a coffee house (ie: Starbuck's or Peets's), a sandwich shop, and a day spa. Let's say that the �•' coffee house's customers only stay for an average of 15 minutes, the sandwich shop's clientele .�.� almost always leave within an hour, and the day spa's customers stay for average of two hours. What is the appropriate time limit for this block? Do we set the time limit at two hours, which would theoretically allow everyone's customers to stay for the time that they need? This would be very likely to attract employees, who would only need to rotate their cars four times during the day to avoid a ticket. So then we might pick a shorter time limit, say an hour, which might eliminate some of that—but now the day spa's customers will be forced to face tickets or walk further than they want. Another approach might be to mix it up—perhaps three spaces at 15 minutes, three spaces at one hour, and three spaces at two hours. This seems reasonable, right? Unfortunately, it isn't. We pa�e 1 J