San Francisco Neighbors raise concern at Engineering Public Hearing

Mahdu Shetti believes  reinforced parking permits promote safety in San Francisco neighborhoods.

At 4 p.m. Dr. Mahdu Shetti, mother of two girls, ages one and four, parks one and a half blocks away from home carrying two children, screaming and hungry, often cold or in the rain because the whole block is parked with non-resident cars bumpers to bumpers for the past four years.

“The challenge of parking over the last four years have been increasingly difficult. We have to be extra careful because the street is filled with many non-residents. We have to worry about the children running into the street and hit by cars. And that is an additional safety hazard for any parent who would never want to experience with their children,” Shetti said.

This is how a typical weekday evening looks like for a mother of two, and many residents who live on San Pablo Avenue, San Francisco.

The Engineering Public Hearing was held on Friday morning, March 3, at San Francisco City Hall for the purpose of San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and city hall officials to listen to public comments on the posted parking and traffic changes affecting San Francisco streets before the SFMTA make a final decision.

According to Folks the final decision of parking permits on this particular case will be confirmed by SFMTA on April, 2017.

“We are here to voice our opinions and hope the city listens,” said community leader, Julia Raskin.

San Pablo is the only street from the St. Francis circle in which a parking permit is not required. SFMTA Senior Engineer Thomas P. Folks said if residents tried to get parking permits in San Pablo St. four years ago but it did not meet the requirement occupancy.

According to SFMTA, 80 percent of the parking spaces have to be occupied in order for the parking permit to be applicable. Folk said the street barely met the requirement this year by 80.6 percent.

Shetti said crime is increasing in the neighborhood for the past three years. And many non-resident park on the street for hours or days. Shetti is very concern that some non-residents park on San Pablo and wait in their cars for hours to watch when residents come in and out of their houses.

“Both my car and the neighbor’s house have been broken into this past year,” Shetti said.

Nancy Hitchcock, another neighborhood resident said the problem is aggravated by the fire station, which is one block from San Pablo St. The fire station uses San Pablo for entry not just for this street, but for the rest of streets beyond that.  She said when the firefighters come in for an emergency they have nowhere to park.

“The fire engine cannot go through the street if someone’s going the other direction. People starts yelling at each other ‘you back up,’ ‘no, you back up’ and this goes on everyday,”  Hitchcock said.

“I think we are going to miss our four-minute response time which the city is so proud of,” Hitchcock said.

Hitchcock said a driver screamed at the paramedics to move the ambulance who were loading a code three patient because people parked on both sides bumper to bumper, and there was no way any car could get through unless they reversed and let the ambulance go through first.

“And I happened to know it was code three because the ambulance got screamed at by someone trying to get around them when they were loading my husband, who was dying in the ambulance. It’s a mess, and this is starting to become a serious issue in our neighborhood,” Hitchcock said.

The parking permit petition was originally submitted in 2014; however parking occupancy surveys conducted since then indicated that RPP was not yet warranted. This year more recent parking occupancy surveys now indicate that the parking occupancy has increased dramatically to 88 percent, according to Kathryn Studwell, Program manager of Residential Permit Parking.

Residents of San Pablo Avenue has requested residential permit parking area O, which is from San Pablo Avenue between Santa Monica Way and Portola Drive for 2-hour parking limit from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays except vehicles