Photo by ep_jhu
Public comments on the District’s proposed food truck regulations were due Tuesday, and among the ideas submitted by the food truck lobby is one that would allow mobile food vendors to buy parking permits that would free them from the burden of having to constantly feed the meter.
Che Ruddell-Tabisola, the executive director of the Food Truck Association, says his group proposed that rather than having its members constantly leave their customers waiting while they hop out of their trucks to replenish parking meters, they purchase permits that would be good for about four hours a day.
Currently, food trucks that line up in crowded downtown spots like Franklin Square or Farragut Square live on the ticking hand of the parking meter. When time expires before the lunch shift ends, food truck operators must either hop out and make their customers wait or risk getting slapped with another parking ticket.
Such permits would make it “much more efficient for us to operate,” Rudell-Tabisola says. “Allows us to pay a reasonable premium.”
A similar concept is listed in the latest version of proposed food truck regulations, says Helder Gil, a spokesman for the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. Merchants wishing to operate in so-called “Mobile Roadway Vending Locations” would be required to obtain permits from the District Department of Transportation that would be renewable every three months.
But the dimensions of those vending locations is still a raw sticking point between the food trucks and regulators. DCRA’s proposed rule-making repeats the status quo provision that food trucks only operate where the sidewalks are at least 10 feet wide. At some of the busiest locations for the industry—Farragut and Franklin squares, L’Enfant Plaza, George Washington University—the sidewalks are narrower. And Rudell-Tabisola contends that food trucks are singled out in the enforcement of that requirement.
“It’s not unusual for a sidewalk cafe to get a waiver and be on six feet of sidewalk,” he says. “There is no kind of sidewalk restriction for the souvenir trucks,” referring to the vendors that line the streets around the National Mall.
“It’s completely anti-competitive.”
Meanwhile, food trucks appear to be racking up as many parking tickets as ever. A passerby on the 13th Street NW side of Franklin Square yesterday shot video of a parking enforcement officer slapping multiple trucks with tickets:
