MTA officials weren't exactly immediate at getting back to me, but I was surprised to get a call from a very nice and responsive Maxine on Monday morning. She enlightened me on the process of how SF parking permit zoning works...

Basically for a street to get zoning, the residents of the street must petition SF MTA to become zoned, which takes +50% of the block / street's resident's signatures. They must choose to either create a new zone for this area or expand a nearby, existing zone. The expanding method is most common, which makes sense. We don't need micro zones all over the place and expansion gives the parker more options / parking areas.

Another interesting aspect about expansion is that the newly expanded area pulls the hours from the expanded area as well as the permit letter. Keeping streets on the same time schedule makes it easier for the meter maids to do their job. So in 200 block of Dore's case, we hooked onto the 0-99 block of Sheridan ( http://bit.ly/SheridanAndDoreMap ) when Dore requested to be zoned in 2005. Unfortunately our block of Dore isn't even close to Sheridan. I mean it is as the crow flies, but to get to the 200 Dore block from Sheridan, one would have to take a left on 10th, go 1.5 blocks, left on Bryant for 1 block, left on 9th for 1 block, left on Harrison for 1/2 block, and left onto Dore. 4 Blocks. Google says it's 4 minutes away!

So Maxine informed me of the only option if the hours were to change on 200 block of Dore. To do this I'd have to petition the block to match our block with another street's hours. This will require +50% of the block's approval. She recommended Langton's hours, which is 2 hour limit, Monday through Friday, 8am to 6pm. This would be much better than 1 hour limit, seven days a week, 8am to 10pm. For this to happen, SF MTA will have to decide if this time schedule is close enough to the surrounding areas, which it is since Harrison and Bryant are both on this schedule, but without U zone.

Maxine submitted the request the MTA and we'll see if they approve.

More on the multiple zone permits in the next post.