Visionary Transpo Bureaucrats, Part 4: Jay Primus and Rina Cutler
This is the fourth part in Streetsblog’s series profiling 11 officials who are bringing American cities and towns into the 21st century when it comes to transportation and planning policy. Read the earlier profiles in part one, part two, and part three.
Jay Primus
Manager, SFMTA’s SFPark program
In your average city, parking policy is pretty rigid: The parking meters have their rates, and the rates don’t change, no matter how much cruising and double-parking results from prices that don’t reflect demand for curbside space.
That’s not how things work in San Francisco. For the last few years, the SFMTA has been rolling out a groundbreaking program called SFPark, which recognizes that curbside parking is a scarce good and should be priced in response to demand. Headed up by Jay Primus, SFPark could be the model for parking policy that cities all over the country seek to emulate.
Applying the theories of UCLA professor Donald Shoup, SFPark promises to reduce cruising and double-parking by adjusting prices and distributing information, so that drivers find available spaces quickly instead of searching fruitlessly ad nauseam. It’s called “dynamic parking,” and it adds a whole new level of sophistication and intelligence to parking policy — not to mention a mountain of data.
Overseeing the interpretation of and response to all this data is Primus. Managing the parking data — not to mention the public communications challenge that comes with an overhaul of parking prices — is a big job. Primus has been hard at work at it now for three years.
There have been bumps, and as one would expect, some backlash when the program has expanded into areas that currently don’t have meters. Encouragingly, the rollout has gone smoothly in areas that already have meters. Primus himself has said it is too soon to judge the effect of the program.
But there’s no disputing that Primus is leading San Francisco to a new frontier of parking policy. And the lessons learned from SFPark will prove valuable for cities everywhere.
Rina Cutler
Philadelphia Public Works Director
Rina Cutler has a big job. As Philadelphia’s Deputy Mayor for Transportation and Public Utilities, Cutler not only leads the streets department, but also the water department and the airport.
Cutler has proven she can do all three of those jobs and help lead Philadelphia in a new, more sustainable direction. Formerly the Philadelphia regional manager at Ed Rendell’s PennDOT, Cutler has made waves with her “Green City, Clean Waters” program, which manages stormwater using porous pavement and sophisticated landscaping techniques. The concept has since been adopted by other cities including Portland and Cleveland.
Meanwhile, Cutler has also supported the growth of Philadelphia’s underappreciated bike network. The bike scene in Philly is growing robust: According to a study by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, more than two percent of Philly commuters get to work by bike, a higher share than New York or Chicago. Cutler has been helping to advance this trend by fighting some tough battles to put bike lanes on major thoroughfares.
According to Bike Coalition Director Alex Doty, Cutler’s collaborative style is helping to move the city forward at a steady clip. Recently, a traffic survey found that 20 percent of the total vehicle throughput on 13th Street — one of the city’s seven buffered bike lanes — was bicycles. And because Cutler makes such a point of generating consensus, Doty is convinced the improvements have real staying power.
“Rina would never call herself a politician. She’s just very good with people,” said Doty. “She can also cut to the chase and make decisions. She’s a very capable administrator in terms of getting change within her department, but also the people she works with just really feel like she’s got their back.”
I really enjoyed this series. Thanks, Ms. Schmidt, for sharing with us.
Jay Primus is a champ. It’s great to see him listed in this pantheon of outstanding public servants.
Jay Primus is an intelligent, passionate, dedicated public servant. It’s nice to see him profiled here!
The man behind him in this picture is the truly amazing man. I’m not detracting from Mr. Primus accomplishments, I think he is great, but the man behind here there is the man SF should honor one day when he retires.
Based on the commonly accepted definition of visionary (noun), I agree Jay is visionary.
Defintion: a person who is given to audacious, highly speculative, or impractical ideas or schemes; dreamer.
The program has spent $40MM and has yet to provide any data indicating it is working! Impressive indeed.
I completely dis-agree with the flowery accoulades for Jay Primus – I think Jay is creating more problems.
The SFPark meters in my neighborhood sit completely un-used. The rates have not adjusted despite promises to the contrary. By definition his policies and those of Dr. Shoup will insure that less people come to SF to spend their money. Additionally, how is being able to feed parking meters for up to six hours doing anything for the business’s that need turnover? It’s not.
They will continue to add more meters to make a scarce resource even scarcer – and this you call Vison?
I don’t think Dr. Shoup’s (did he get his doctorate via mail order?) Ideal for better management of spaces included hard revenue target’s via meters and fines (did they – perhaps this is the vision you refer too?).
Dr. Shoup policies – calls for improvements to the physical infrastructure – side walks streets etc. Throwing more money at Muni is like putting perfume on a goat – it’s still a goat. Muni’s push for much higher rates on fines and meters is nothing more than a money grab by the city. I am surprised the readers here see it as anything else.
Rina Cutler rocks, she’s great in the E-Lane video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAju6qKEuck
Re: Sparky
Jay Primus is a visionary leader precisely because he has the fortitude to stand up to people like you and implement a vision for a better-functioning transportation system that extends beyond the end of the block and deeper into the future than tomorrow afternoon.
Philly’s cyclists are
the worst threat to pedestrians since flash mobs. We need red light enforcement for the bozos
on bicycles who routinely blow through signals and
groups of pedestrians as they squeeze through the narrowest of openings between
cars in traffic. It’s only going to get
worse with the nicer weather. A
two-wheeled monster has been created in Philly.
Rina and Commissioner Ramsey – do something to get a handle on this outrage
before a pedestrian pays the ultimate price!
SFpark has almost one years worth of data…but no discernable effects on utilization. Rates go up..occupancy has gone up, rates go down…occupancy has gone down. This has occurred over and over across the city in the SFpark “pilot areas”. SFpark’s model cost tens of millions of tax payer dollars but is not demonstarting any positiive effects. Yet, it is still being expanded to other areas at additional costs to tax payers. Why?? These sorts of pilot programs are fine, and failure is a natural outcome for some, but when they show no results they need to either be modified or eliminated. They should not have more money thrown at them so they can expand.
Biking in Philly is more fun!