SAN FRANCISCO—On August 16, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) voted to allow median parking on Dolores Street during church hours. Critics had previously referred to this practice as “Parking for God,” and had criticized city officials for allegedly neglecting to penalize illegally parked churchgoers’ vehicles.

In an effort to ease neighborhood complaints, the SFMTA created a proposal to specify the times that median parking on Dolores Street would be permitted. Details of the proposal, which refer to the Dolores Street Median Parking Pilot, have yet to be finalized. The SFMTA has planned a public hearing on Friday, November 18 with the intention of discussing the proposal’s rules.

According to the SFMTA website, the Dolores Street Median Parking Pilot “could begin in early 2017 and will run for a period of 16 months.” The pilot will be assessed in terms of the following: reduction of night-time median parking, elimination of parking in red zones, adherence to permitted parking hours, and elimination of parallel parking between medians.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency specifies on their website that formalized median parking on Dolores Street will be limited to locations where such parking practices have “historically existed.” They also emphasize that one of the primary objectives of the Dolores Street Median Parking Pilot is to “increase safety of the Dolores corridor” by reducing median parking outside of permitted hours.