March 24, 2008
Tidal Basin Parking Lot to Be Closed for Cherry Blossoms
Both the Post and WTOP have stories this morning announcing the National Park Service's decision to close the tiny Tidal Basin parking lot during the National Cherry Blossom Festival this year. Talk about overdue ideas. Anyone who's been down to see the blossoms at peak hours over the last decade can tell you that the additional traffic caused by the yahoos who seem to think they'll be able to snag a spot in the lot, which has only 180 parking spaces, is a nuisance that should have been done away with long ago.
Obviously, our position is that any able bodied person should take Metro or ride a bike down to the Tidal Basin during the festival. But for those with a legitimate reason to drive (say, you have a disabled relative you're bringing with you), the Park Service has set up a new parking alternative: 800 free parking spots are available along Ohio Drive SW around Hains Point, and a free shuttle will take people to and the area to the Tidal Basin.
The shuttle will run each day, beginning on Friday, every 20 to 30 minutes, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. between multiple spots around Hains Point and the Tidal Basin. And of course, there are plenty of cherry blossoms to be seen from Hains Point itself. The National Park Service has determined peak blooming dates will be between March 27 and April 3. The National Cherry Blossom Festival runs from March 29 to April 13, with the parade scheduled for Saturday, April 12.
Photo by mnesterpics
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you forgot to mention the best part about the article from the very end: Paddles the Beaver - the new mascot for the Cherry Blossom festival.
Make it a handicapped-only lot for the festival?
Shuttle buses suck worse than the parking fiasco. Imagine the lines...
There's a little parking lot by the river, under the bridge between I-95 and the Metro tracks, but I suppose that will be swamped by buses full of sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their 'Sunday Mirrors', complaining about the tea, 'Oh they don't make it properly here do they not like at home' stopping at Majorcan bodegas, selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in cotton sun frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh because they overdid it on the first day.
You're kidding! Paddles the Beaver is the official mascot for the Cherry Blossom festival? They are tempting fate, given what happened a few years ago with the beavers infesting the Tidal Basin and chewing down some trees.
Amusingly enough, Paddles' job is to remind people not to harm the trees.
"Also new this year are a daily visit by Paddles the Beaver, a larger-than-life-size mascot who will scamper about the Tidal Basin, reminding blossom watchers not to harm the trees;"
Drew - This is no different than when DC made Chimpy the Ebola Monkey the Official Mascot for the Hemorrhagic Fever Festival. Little guy got a parade and everything, although the blimp got kinda messy, what with all the dysentery.
I'm confused, are they closing just the strip of parking by the paddleboats, or are the closing all parking lots around the todal basin (for instance the lot over by the George Mason thing)?
I think they should shut down both. That lot over by the George Mason thing creates such a bottleneck. I learned that the hard way years ago when I first though it'd be a good idea to drive there. During peak blossoms. On a Saturday.
Sooo... I take it Paddles is a big, brown beaver?
Heh heh. He said "beaver."
This is just another effort by the anti-car social engineers to force everyone to take mass transit.
There would be no shortage of parking if they would just expand the parking lot, which could be done cheaply and easily by cutting down all those tiny little trees alongside the Tidal Basin. Problem solved!
Pontoon bridges on the Tidal Basin would also allow for more parking.
You know, now that you mention it. If they knock down that silly monument to Thomas Jefferson, they could add another 200 or so parking spaces, easily, with access to the 14th Street Bridge.
I mean, who gives a monument to someone who came in 3rd?
"Every 20 to 30 minutes" is National Park Service-speak for "every hour or so until we get sick of it." Between Mr. and Mrs. Moronica Tourista and their 2.3 children crawling along at 2mph in their Dodge Caravan, and the Idaho contingent of the Caucasian Christians for Commerce walking in the street, no way in hell those shuttle busses are going to run on time.
And did Congress include that earmark in the Park Service's budget for beaver shaving? Those guys are looking a little shaggy, and you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. Nothing fancy; maybe a Brazilian bikini wax or a nice little "landing strip." A girl's gotta look her best when she's got company.
Forget pontoons -- just completely fill in the Tidal Basin. That'll solve not just the parking issue, but also the occasional flooding.
And whatever you do, don't fall for the old homeless-guy-pretending-to-be-a-valet scam. I've lost track of how many cars I've lost that way.
So that's where my car went.
wow, i'm impressed that you've found multiple homeless guys who are coherent enough to drive a car without crashing it 50 feet down the road, monkey.
Why do I have the sinking feeling that out-of-state drivers pulling up to the parking lot will simply freeze and not know what to do when they find their favorite parking lot closed?
I'm imagining more honking, fist shaking, and road rage than ever, thanks to bewlidered vars not knowing where to go from the blocked entrance to the parking lot.
The longer these out-of-state drivers are lost in the city = the longer we city residents have to deal with their idiocy, fanny packs.
Can't we just charge $5 for two hours for the good lot and separate these people from their money? With the revenue, we could fund a real shuttle every 10 minutes and perhaps a better mascot.