Photo by Dave Adams

Photo by Dave Adams

The free, city-wide visitor parking pass program announced by the D.C. Department of Transportation last week doesn’t have that many fans.

DDOT says that all residential parking permit eligible households and those in ANCs 1A (Columbia Heights and Park View), 1B (Columbia Heights, LeDroit Park, Pleasant Plains, Shaw, U Street and University Heights) and 1C (Adams Morgan) can apply for a free visitor parking pass. The current pass will expire in September 2013.

While the passes may be popular with residents who are sick of their guests getting ticketed because it’s too much of a hassle to go to a police department, others worry the passes will be sold and abused. Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) is one of them.

“We were supposed to have an overarching, comprehensive plan about parking in general, of which the visitor parking passes were supposed to be a part,” Cheh, who chairs the Committee on the Environment, Public Works, and Transportation, told the Post. “The whole thing was supposed to be thought through. That has not happened.”

Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) is also not a fan.

Topher Matthews of the Georgetown Metropolitan called the program “idiotic” and lamented that a coupon system being worked on for Georgetown won’t happen.

The consensus among those working on this project was that some sort of a coupon system was necessary. That way you’d be given some fixed number of day passes. Say, maybe, 20. Go over, and either you couldn’t use it anymore, or maybe you’d have to pay for more. This would significantly reduce, if not eliminate, abuse.

That was where the parking task force was moving towards. But apparently the two employees in charge of the effort were fired. Now DDOT is making the absolutely idiotic decision to expand the VPP program city-wide, including Georgetown. Any other parking reforms for Georgetown appear completely dead. So all we’ll get is more out-of-state drivers parking on the side streets because they’re willing to buy VPPs on the black market.

Yes, having a pass will be convenient for residents. But once the system begins to be abused, that convenience will no longer be worth it. Particularly since a much better system was on the table!

Greater Greater Washington’s David Alpert called the program “messy” and said DDOT “failed” to put in place the better system promised.

Filed Under: ddot, mary cheh, tommy wells, visitor parking pass,