Time to look into app based connected parking such as ParkWhiz or Parkifi. Sensors embedded in the space provide real-time space availability and even allow booking ahead.

Do it just like Foothills Park in Palo Alto. If someone from out of town comes to Castro (especially if they come from Palo Alto), just charge them $10 per hour. That's chump change considering they own $2.5+ million "starter homes." Mountain View residents park for free of course.

Wait, you want to put in parking meters, to cover the cost of writing more tickets?! I'd like to meet the genius who came up with that plan. How about building a new parking structure instead? That way, MORE people will come, not less.

I've never had trouble parking in downtown- as mentioned in the article, the parking garage on Bryant and California is reliable. If the cost of parking 1 block closer to my destination is metered parking and more tickets, count me out. Some highly visible way of directing visitors to where more spots can be found seems it would be adequate- better and more signage could help here, especially if there's a display to say how many spots are available. A website with real-time data on where spots are available would be very cool, but naturally more expensive. Cost could be reigned in if you only monitored a selection of large lots though, rather than space-by-space.

Moreover, metering parking would be needlessly exclusionary for people who don't have $5 to blow just to park, never mind getting a ticket. The abundant free parking downtown was one of the best parts of Mountain View when I first visited as a student, after the expensive parking nightmare of downtown Santa Cruz, and I still enjoy it now that I live here. It would be a shame to lose it.

The article says there's ample parking at the Bryant/California garage. That's the solution, nothing else needed.

Lot 12 will be full when CPA and the library are open regular hours. Customers and staff park there.

I know we new urbanists sound like a broken record when we always point people to the book "The High Cost of Free Parking" by Donald Shoup. Free parking is anything but. It's extremely valuable land that gets taken up by unused private vehicles.

When communist countries institute a price cap for a loaf of bread, the result is bread shortages.

When we institute a $0 price cap for a parking space, the result is parking shortages.

A lot of people live within a few miles of Castro Street who currently drive because it's so much more convenient than any other option. Why don't we take a few dozen car parking spaces and turn them into parking spaces for hundreds of bikes and scooters?

@Jeremy Hoffman

All for recycling (pun semi-intended) some parking spaces for bike parking ....but only if the bike parking is secured and supervised (like a valet managed bike corral).
I bike almost every day but will never bike to a restaurant on Castro.... until I have some certainty I'll still have a bike to ride after dinner.