San Francisco's number one industry, by far, is tourism,,,such an easy industry vs factories and boiler room offices. Check. Conventions at the three blocks of Moscone and over 3000 restaurants, with dozens of hotels and motels. Check. The city with crazy standard lots of only 25 feet width and grid streets going straight up and straight down 33% grade hills and small easily recognizable neighborhoods in the northeast quarter almost sells itself. Check.
Then why does SF charge for luggage carts at SFO? Other airports don't. And exactly how much does that fee parking lot at pier 30 bring in now vs when is was a free and welcoming lot to any overnight charter/tour bus or just-parking RV for years? Because nowadays i see lots of out-of-town charter/tour buses getting $75 parking tickets for illegally parking and think of how much bad will that generates,,,times 10 ,,,every day!
The Mayor says,,,he is against idling buses , but he has taken away the remedy of a big free lot that we local and the out-of-towner buses used for years, and instead we have buses circling,,,and circling,,,making more and more smog and traffic,,,for frustrating hours,,,just so one lousy parking lot rental fee at Pier 30 can be collected ?! Seems stupid and petty,,,especially for such a rich city that says it is so welcoming.
Even the local DMCs made use of the free parking at Pier 30 when there was a big convention in town and they needed to park 30-50 local buses. Yes, eventually Pier 30 will someday be the new cruise ship pier, if it ever gets out of litigation. And even when it does, shouldn't such a friendly city as San Francisco says it is have more free out-of-town charter/tour bus parking than say Portland, which the last time i was up there years ago only had 5 spaces downtown ??
We, San Francisco, can do so much better in welcoming our guest to this the most expensive city in the 48 states. Maybe we can even get the greedy concierges to take only a %5 cut ?!
