To the Editor:
If one looks at Old Town streets, late at night on a weeknight, one will see plenty of street parking spaces available, thus there is plenty of spaces for resident street parking. But if one looks at the streets on a Friday night at about 7:30 p.m. on a nice night, one will see no available street parking and many cars cruising for parking.
In addition, at the same time, if one looks in the public parking areas one will see there is plenty of available parking spaces there.
Why is this the case? The short answer is because of the city’s poor, bordering on negligent, mismanagement of street parking. The city manages street parking against the industry standard. It is well known from parking research that free street parking attracts more cars over transit riders/pedestrians which in a pedestrian-oriented place like Old Town is, at a minimum, a nuisance and could be dangerous as those cars cruise for street parking inviting collisions with pedestrians. In addition, it invites more air, water and noise pollution. Further, it is unfair to residents who pay for street parking
but many times can’t find it and are in effect paying for visitor street parking. Also, using cars is costly to society: accidents, deaths, injuries, property damage, mitigation of pollution, illnesses, road building and maintenance. Hence, it is not ethical to unnecessarily encourage car use, but it is particularly egregious and ironic for a pedestrian-oriented place like Old Town to do so.
What is the industry standard for street parking? Like in Arlington, little or no free visitor street parking and the price is set to be equal or above public off-street parking — residents can still park there with their sticker. The research shows this attracts more visiting transit riders/pedestrians and less cars and the cars that do come in go right to the off-street public parking rather than cruise the streets for parking. One doesn’t see less visitors.
Why does the city engage in possibly negligent practices? A possible clue came in a recent rezoning for La Bergerie owners with their new site on Princess and N. Washington streets — their off-street parking requirement was waived thus dumping all their future customers cars on the streets to the peril of the neighboring residents street parking availability. This site is not convenient to transit where the problem could be mitigated — it is .8 mile to metro and in Arlington for example they require under .2 mile to metro to waive the off-street parking requirement. So the city seems to be favoring commercial establishment whims over the tax paying and voting residents.
It is past time — particularly considering increased parking demands are coming in the future from the waterfront development and casino visitors from National Harbor — the residents of Old Town get the attention of the City Council and mayor through their votes on this issue.
What should happen like other progressive cities/towns is that most of the free on-street parking be converted to resident-only parking and the rest be converted to paid parking for office workers and visitors — residents can still park there with their sticker. This will increase city revenue, pedestrian friendliness, transit use, safety and quality of life while decreasing pollution, vehicle use and traffic congestion.
Chris Hubbard AIA, LEED-AP, CNU-A
A principal in WHA Architecture and Planning, PC, Arlington, VA., a firm specializing in pedestrian/transit oriented architecture and planning.