Photo of the Day: November 27, 2009
Car Pushed Into Anacostia River By Train
Morning Roundup: Black Friday Edition
Devendra Banhart @ 9:30 Club
Saturday Thanks Don't End At Thanksgiving Photo: November 28, 2009
Just last week, D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) introduced legislation that would impose stricter regulations on parking in certain residential neighborhoods, primarily those around active commercial areas such as Adams Morgan. Today we find out that Mt. Pleasant is looking to try out a new parking approach of its own.
In DC Watch's online newsletter, ANC Commissioner Jack McKay indicated that daily on-street parking permits will be sold to commuters who work in the neighborhood. He writes:
The Residential Permit Parking (RPP) system exists to prevent commuters from using residential streets as free, all-day parking lots, compelling them to pay to park in commercial lots. Fair enough, but what is to be done when there are no commercial lots in the area, and public transit isn’t suitable? This problem arises, for example, with teachers and staff of neighborhood schools. Surely we want them to come to our neighborhood, even if they must come by personal automobile. For most neighborhoods, the severe parking problem comes not during the day, when plenty of parking is freed up by residents taking their cars to work, but at night, when those commuting residents come home.Though we still have to see how the program pans out, it seems like a reasonable local approach to a specific parking challenge. Just as we've said before, it's best if different neighborhoods in the District propose solutions tailored to their specific needs rather than impose uniform restrictions.With Councilmember Graham’s support, Mount Pleasant is about to undertake an experiment to provide daytime-only parking permits for commuters to our neighborhood. A limited number of daytime-only parking permits will be offered, to bona fide Mount Pleasant school and business employees only, for a fee of $160 a quarter, or about $2.50 per workday. Our residential streets will thus serve as a rather inexpensive commercial parking lot, and ideally some of the revenues will be returned to the neighborhood for our use.
Photo by adamsjp2010
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why bother paying for a permit? until they started doing work on the lead pipes on my street, there was a car with maryland tags parked in the same spot for a couple of weeks. free parking courtesy of a lazy parking authority for everyone!
has anyone else noticed the rather large number of out of state cars (usually from MD) with seemingly bogus Handicap signs in windows? Usually the people I see getting in and out of those cars look more than able. Seems like some folks have found a friendly person to issue those stickers so that they can take advantage of the 4 hour parking granted to drivers with disabilities.
Quite honestly, I never thought I'd say this, but they need to do 24-hour ticketing in Mt. Pleasant. It took me nearly 30 minutes to find a parking spot last night, thanks to all the a-holes with Virginia and Maryland plates hogging all of the Zone 1 spots. It's bullcrap and they need to be a hell of a lot more aggressive.
What I find (live over by U street) is that the parking enforcement is right there at 9:30 on street cleaning days but otherwise steer clear of the residential area. The street cleaning storm trooper ticket dispensers may have eased off now that the street cleaning trucks have cameras...I think.
You can get handicapped parking permit for a hangnail and menstrual cramps, if you pay the right people. It's a scam. Tell your doctor you have water on the brain and he'll fill out a handicapped permit for you.
Thank the Lord! I live in Dupont near Loriol Plaza and it takes upwards of an hour to find a parking space on a Friday or Saturday night. There really should be a system to ensure that residents can park before party-goers do.
I love how the justification goes from "surely you have no problem with innocent school teachers" to giving parking to schoolteachers and "business employees".
Frankly I'm not really won over by the schoolteachers lament anyway. I take a bus to work every day, why can't they? Why is Mt. Pleasant considered inaccessible when the 42 bus runs one of the most frequent schedules in the book? I'd kill for 20 buses per hour in the morning rush.
Do any of the MDUs in Mount Pleasant have parking garages beneath them? I'm pretty sure the answer is no, since (almost?) all of them were built back when the horseless carriage was still a novelty.
point is, there are still a hell of a lot of people who will not think of anything but a car for getting around. no way, no how.