Tommy Blog Curbside Parking Plan: Thoughts from Town Halls | Curbside Parking Plan: Thoughts from Town Halls |
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| Written by Tommy Wells | |
| Thursday, 24 January 2008 | |
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I want to thank all the residents and neighbors that came out the last two nights to our Town Hall meetings on the Curbside Parking Management Proposal. As of today, I’ve held 10 community meetings on this plan – getting a full range of recommendations from ANC Commissioners, business leaders, community leaders, church leaders, and neighbors. I appreciate that everyone understands the importance of addressing the problem head on and your questions, comments and feedback are invaluable in helping shape the plan we look to move forward with the Department of Transportation – thanks for being a part of this community discussion and improving it. Reflecting on the discussions at the meetings, I noticed a few themes in the questions that I wanted to touch on again. Issue #1: It appeared to me in the Town Hall meeting last night that some neighbors are concerned the plan is a way to provide additional parking for the Nationals and encourage fans to park in the neighborhoods. The proposal is designed to do exactly the opposite. It is a way to protect residential neighborhoods and our local businesses. We know from experience that if free or cheap parking is available, drivers will circle, hunt and congest our streets looking for these spots. That’s something we want to prevent from day one. The plan addresses this challenge in a few ways. Neighborhood street parking is protected for residents by a combination of one side of residential streets being “resident only” parking, and the other allowing metered parking (Ward 6 residents still park for free) for no more than 2 hours. With a baseball game taking between 3 or 4 hours, limiting parking for 2 hours with strict enforcement makes it very difficult for any ballpark visitor to try and park on these streets – they’ll face tickets, towing and booting of their car. In contrast, the 2 hour limit helps make the distinction between a ballpark visitor and a neighbor’s guest and business customers. We do not want to limit the ability for a neighbor to have guests at their home for any number of reasons – child care, dinner parties, or house work just to name a few. Issue #2: I heard some concerns centered on the question of why we shouldn’t have the current parking rules better enforced. To be sure, strict enforcement is a key to this, or any proposal. But currently, DC law will not protect residential parking during baseball games and special events (which is exactly why I’ve proposed this plan). In most neighborhoods, current parking regulations only protect residential parking until 6:30 pm Monday through Friday, and they have no protections on weekends. Problem is, almost every game the Nationals will play takes place when there are no protections on residential parking. In other words, there is little enforcement option in our residential neighborhoods we can currently use. This plan puts a tool in our toolbox that we currently don’t have. Doing nothing means our residential streets are open game for ballpark parking and I don’t want to create that incentive for drivers to take precious parking spots away from residents. Most games don’t begin until 7:00 pm, so even extending the limit on residential parking for a couple of hours, for example to 9:00 pm, would still allow ballpark drivers to get two hours of free parking in front of our homes before the limits expire for the remainder of the time they are at the game. Issue #3: A few people asked why not build more parking garages around the ballpark to accommodate drivers? The new ballpark is a drastic shift from the more suburban model of RFK Stadium. RFK was built with an ocean of surface parking lots around it, but the new ballpark in Southeast doesn’t have the space for that many lots and garages. I am continuing to push to take advantage of below ground parking that will become available over the next several years as new office and residential buildings come online, but those are currently not an option and may not be for several years until the developments are complete. The Nationals estimate that the average attendance of a game will be around 25,000. They believe that at best, half of those fans will come via Metro. The Nationals have contracted for approximately 5,000 parking spaces in the existing lots and garages, leaving another 5,000-10,000 people coming by car that don’t have a guaranteed parking spot – prompting the concern by most of our neighbors and driving the need to develop a plan on how to protect our neighborhoods. Issue #4: I heard some residents say they feel they do not have a parking problem on their block and they don’t believe that the new ballpark will increase the demand on their streets. I am open to considering a system that allows a block to “opt-out” of the plan if the neighbors on that block don’t want to participate in this pilot program. Just as residents can petition to have their street included in the residential parking permit (RPP) plan, I can see creating a similar petition process to have neighbors opt out of being a part of this proposal. As the legislation moves forward over the next month or so, we can amend the language to make this type of change. Thank you again to everyone for joining us at these meetings. We will be incorporating many of the suggestions into the plan as it moves forward. Please remember that you can continue to submit your comments, suggestions and feedback directly to me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or please join us Wednesday, January 30th, for a public hearing on the proposal in the John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Room 412, beginning at 5:00 p.m. To sign up to testify, you can contact LaDorsa Willis at lwillis This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Readers have left 2 comments. (1) Untitled 2008-01-24 18:02:38 I couldn't go. But if you take out parking meters could you make sure to add in bike parking? Written by Guest User () (2) Untitled 2008-01-25 23:26:55 The earlier draft ordinance did not clarify which purposes applied to which streets, so "Stadium overflow" could have been applied to residential areas. A rewording I suggest which clarifies that is now available at www.ConsensusDemocracy.org/parking.html, click on the uppermost link "alternative draft text". If the DOT "Plan" and especially maps can be made accessible to the community, that is closer to what Tommy says he is aiming at. There is other discussion there also. A wider discussion will be invited of how thoughts about parking relate to how we envisage the longer-term future of Capitol Hill (how much commercial growth), to be added by Sunday 27th January. |
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 28 January 2008 ) |
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