Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Possible Parking Changes for DC
I had missed this article from yesterday's Post about the District's possible new plans for dealing with the excess number of cars per street parking space in the city. The District is considering limiting the number of zoned parking stickers to three per household & increasing the cost per sticker (for the first major increase since 1991). Under the new rules, you would pay $25 for the first permit, $50 for the second & $100 for the third. The District government hopes the new rules will encourage people use Metrorail & Metrobuses.
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9 comments:
If the issue is to try and encourage greater use of public transit, then this proposal does not address that issue. If you want to discourage people from driving to places where they don't live, then you need to raise the "barriers" to parking. One way to do that would be to reduce the time you could park in a permit controlled area without a permit from, say, two hours to one hour. An even more effective way would be to enforce the limits on parking later in the day, rather than allow anyone to park after 5 or 6 p.m. The only way the current proposal would ease pressure on parking in the city would be if a resident was so price sensitive that the increase in the permit fee caused them to get rid of one of their cars. If the city wants to raise the permit fees to generate revenue or because they are no longer "fairly" priced (apparently the price hasn't increased since the early 90's) then I'm open to having that discussion, but they shouldn't kid themselves that they are getting to the root issue with this proposal.
If the city wants to raise extra money and encourage the use of public transportation they should no longer offer convenient free parking to the thousands of city workers who commute in from MD and VA. Would you take public transportation to work if your parking was free and convenient? Also, many staffers at the Captiol get free parking as well. Mose, you're right, can you imagine an internal dialog like this "gee, I'd like to get a car, but that extra $50 I'll pay per year for a permit mmmmm, I'm better off taking public transportation." Please!!!!
I am scheduled to testify. My basic take: parking would be much less problematic on my block & those nearby if we didn't have so many free riders. Overnight, there are numerous out-of-state cars belonging to residents; and 24/7 we have a glut of illegally issued visitor parking permits (from MPD, which does little to stem repeated abuse).
Suggestion: rein in (and punish) the free riders. Upping the RPP fees won't deter them from parking -- hell, they're already outside the system -- and only punishes those of us who obey the law.
An article in today's WaPo makes the same points I made last night, and shows just how widespread the out-of-state-overnight and visitor permit parking problems are.
Have you seen them pull out the big paper book to enter the visitor parking passes if they do that at all. You could develop a quick database and at least keep track of how these things are being issued. This is not a hard problem to solve.
As a result of my incessant nagging (and intervention by Sharon Ambrose's staff), 1D1 has finally implemented a database, which has stopped some (but not all) of the most egregious repeat offenders. All it took was keeping my own d/base for a few months & showing how many repeat permits get issued for certain vehicles & addresses; the abuse was just staggering, and that's for an area of only 6 city blocks.
Over the last THREE years I've called in the following tag: Maryland tags, 4AB-K69, Black Saab Convertible. The owner has lived on the 700 block of 13th NE for years. ETHICS VIOLAION: Her boyfriend is a MPD Officer who regularly provides her the temporary visitors permit. Prime example of the problem--and the city wants to charge more for legit registrations--i.e,punish those who follow the law? Unbelievable.
Mark- your database is great. How can I provide you with information of blatent violators, i.e, Maryland tags, 4AB-K69, Black Saab Convertible, on my block?
Anon, I'm only keeping a dbase on my local area -- trying to cover the whole Hill (in fact, anything more than I can monitor personally) is outside the scope of the current project.
As for your Saab story, I suggest emailing the First District Commander, diane[dot]groomes[at]dc[dot]gov. Your best bet is a) be polite but firm about the problem and b) give as many details as you can. Don't just describe the vehicle; provide details on every parking pass (valid dates, issuing officer, permit serial number) that you can. If you haven't been keeping track, start now. If the vehicle has a 30-day pass on it, there shouldn't be another one issued until next year. If there's another pass issued before then, complain again.
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